INDEPENDENT SINCE 1880
The Corne¬ Daily Sun Vol. 141, No. 2
8 Pages — Free
THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2024 n ITHACA, NEW YORK
News
Dining
Science
Weather
Info Sci Struggles
Oh SNAP!
Device Development
Cloudy
As the information science major grows, the department struggles to keep up with the students' demands. | Page 3
Daniela Rojas '25 discusses the importance of SNAP benefits and the value of destigmatizing their discussion. | Page 5
CUBMD, a biomedical project team, is developing a device to aid patients suffering from opioid withdrawal. | Page 8
HIGH: 50º LOW: 36º
Annual Chili CookOff Ends in Stabbing By ANUSHKA SHOREWALA Sun Assistant News Editor
While local Ithaca residents were participating in the 26th Annual Chili Cook-Off March 2, a heated altercation ensued, resulting in a stabbing incident. According to the media release from Ithaca Police Department Lieutenant Thomas Condzella, the police responded to a report of a disturbance at the 100 Block of West State Street, where multiple individuals were reportedly engaged in a physical altercation, one of whom was carrying a knife. Law enforcement discovered at the scene that two of the three individuals implicated had already departed. The individual present had suffered
a laceration to his face during the altercation. Bangs Ambulance Company and the Ithaca Fire Department initially responded to the injury and conveyed the individual to a nearby medical facility, where medical professionals determined that his injuries were not life-threatening. According to the preliminary investigation, the individuals involved in the altercation appeared to have been acquainted with each other. “This incident does not appear to be a random attack and, that said, there is no larger public safety concern,” Condzella wrote in the press release. The Ithaca Voice reported that Ithaca Police Chief Thomas Kelly, who attended the cook-off as a judge, said that the
LUCY CAO / SUN CONTRIBUTOR
Cook-off crime | Ithacans viewed a heated altercation and stabbing at this year's Chili Cook-Off. incident was unrelated to the event. Police Department is urging anyone The identities of the two individuals with information related to the incident who fled the scene remain unknown, as to assist with the ongoing investigation. they were described only as two males wearing hooded sweatshirts. The Ithaca Anushka Shorewala can be reached at ashorewala@cornellsun.com.
Endangered Language Speakers Look to Cornell Stephen Henhawk discusses efforts toward revitalizing and teaching others the Gayogohó:no language By KATE SANDERS and SKYLAR KLEINMAN Sun News Editor and Sun Contributor
As a child raised by his grandparents in the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve near Hamilton, Ontario during the 1970s and 1980s, Stephen Henhawk heard Gayogohó:no' — a Haudenosaunee language also known as Cayuga that is spoken in Upstate New York, Ontario and Oklahoma — everywhere he went. “We went to the post office. The lady at the post office — she spoke Gayogohó:no'. We went to the local corner store. The lady that worked there — they spoke Gayogohó:no',” Mr. Henhawk said. “I went with my gramps to buy new tires at this garage. The guy that was there — he spoke Gayogohó:no'. Everyone did.” However, in part due to the lasting impact of residential schools in Canada — institutions with extensive records of abuse that attempted to forcibly assimilate indigenous children into white Canadian society from the 1880s through the 1990s — the Gayogohó:no' language now faces an uncertain future. In 2010, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization denoted the Gayogohó:no' language as “critically endangered.” In 2016, The Canadian Census reported that 55 people spoke Gayogohó:no' as their first language. Mr. Henhawk — who learned the language from his grandmother, Irwina Henhawk — said that at age 48, he is now one of the youngest of the few remaining first-language Gayogohó:no' speakers. Mr. Henhawk, who now resides in Ithaca, has been teaching Gayogohó:no' for about 15 years. He said that he decided to begin teaching the language when he saw dwindling numbers of teachers in a Gayogohó:no' immersion program in
ISABELLE JUNG / SUN GRAPHICS EDITOR
Lost language | Classified as a "critically endangered" language, Gayogohó:no' speakers are working to resurrect the language in the Cornell and Cayuga Nation communities.
which he enrolled his three sons. “As [my sons] were going through school, I started to notice … [that] the number of teachers was dropping really dramatically,” Mr. Henhawk said. “There wasn’t anybody that was younger that was taking initiative at the time to do anything.” Since then, Mr. Henhawk has worked closely with speakers in Six Nations of the Grand River and the Seneca-Cayuga reservation in Oklahoma to not only revitalize Gayogohó:no' language in their communities but also share their knowledge of the language with Gayogohó:no' people living in their ancestral homeland — the Finger Lakes region — who had largely lost touch with the language. “Most of our people have no reference
to our language,” Mr. Henhawk said. “A lot of our people had never even heard Gayogohó:no' spoken before, especially in New York State before I came here.” Gayogohó:no'Learning Project In 2021, Mr. Henhawk co-founded the Gayogohó:no' Learning Project, a collaboration of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people promoting awareness of the Gayogohó:no' language and lifestyle. The project offers Gayogohó:no'language courses catering to all levels of learners and video recordings of Ithaca-based classes taught by Mr. Henhawk. It also hosts culturally significant events, including a two-day maple sugaring workshop led by Mr. Henhawk in 2023 that explored lost cultural connections to natural resources. “[I started the project] out of necessi-
ty,” Mr. Henhawk said. “When I moved to Ithaca, … I noticed that no one was teaching classes and doing different things culturally.” Mr. Henhawk hopes that the Gayogohó:no' Learning Project will foster a deeper connection between the language and the ancestral homelands of the Gayogohó:no' people. “We teach a lot of students [at Cornell],” Mr. Henhawk said, referencing AIIS 3324: Cayuga Language and Culture which is currently taught by Prof. Jessica Martin, American Indian and Indigenous studies. “But those teachings leave every four years [as students] go back to their communities, so I see a need for cultural understanding within the community itself here.” Despite the Project’s outreach, Mr. Henhawk feels a sense of “worried optimism” regarding the future of the Gayogohó:no'language. “[I’m worried] that we’re not learning [enough] because the idea of teaching Gayogohó:no' in this manner is relatively new,” Mr. Henhawk said. “But with optimism, I look at what we’ve been able to do in New York State [given that] for so long, there were only two places in the world where you could go to hear Gayogohó:no', in Six Nations or Oklahoma.” Ceremonial Importance Sachem Sam George, who lives in Union Springs, said that he did not know Gayogohó:no' until Mr. Henhawk began efforts to revitalize the language there in 2014 “When we started coming out [to Union Springs] in 2014 — when we got a teacher out here — then that’s when I started learning more,” George said. See RESTORATION page 3