Minnesota's Greatest Generation Oral History Project: Minnesota Native American Interviews: Interview with Jim Clark

Titles: Minnesota's Greatest Generation Oral History Project: Minnesota Native American Interviews: Interview with Jim Clark (Supplied title)

Description: BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION: Jim Clark was born in 1918 and grew up in the Pine County. He worked in the CCCID [Civilian Conservation Corps Indian Division] for three years. He served in the U.S. Army as a medic during World War II. After the war Clark returned home to Aazhoomog in 1946. He found work at a hospital in Minneapolis in 1953 and continued to work in hospitals in the Twin Cities area for the next thirty years. In 1970 he began teaching the Ojibwe language at evening classes. He retired from hospital work in 1983 and soon afterwards began working in the Minneapolis Public Schools where he taught Ojibwe for eight years. In the early 1990s Clark returned to the Mille Lacs area where he stayed active in the Ojibwe community and wrote a memoir in both English and Ojibwe, Naawigiizis, Memories of Center of the Moon, which was published in 2002. SUBJECTS DISCUSSED: Growing up in Aazhoomog; ricing and sugar camps and other traditional activities; life during the Depression; boarding school experiences; speaking Ojibwe more than English while growing up; boarding school experiences at Hayward and Wahpeton; CCC experiences; mail censorship during WWII; technological changes since WWII; working in hospitals; marriage and children; teaching the Ojibwe language; writing down stories and how he got to know Louise Erdrich, who wrote his book's introduction; preserving Ojibwe language and culture.

Dates

• 08/23/2006 (Creation)

Creation

• interviewee: Clark, James
• interviewer: White, Karissa

Identifiers

• Library Call Number: OH 118
• Accession Number: AV2008.31.15

Holding Type: Oral History - Interview

Project

• Oral History - Project, MHS Collection, project: 'Minnesota's Greatest Generation Oral History Project: Minnesota Native American Interviews' <OH 118>

Quantity: 2 hours sound cassettes 27 pages transcript

Format

• Content Category: sound recordings
• Content Category: text

Measurements

• 90

Subjects

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