UI grad student will trace family history in Oklahoma
Some students have no issues finding information about their family history. They simply ask a parent or family member about their grandparents or other members of their extended family.
Other people do not have that luxury.
One of those people is Jordan Clapper, a University of Idaho graduate student. Clapper will travel to Oklahoma in early August to trace the history of his family, who are members of the Native American Ponca Tribe. The Tribe, although native to Nebraska, has a reservation in Oklahoma that Clapper will travel to thanks to a fellowship provided by the UI English department.
“The opportunity has just kind of just been one of those really quick things,” Clapper said. “I’ve been talking to a couple of my professors and just kind of wanting to do this as a project that I just needed some way to fund it, because it’s not exactly cheap to really travel anywhere.”
He said he has never visited the reservation and has no solid ties to the area after his mother was adopted off the reservation as a child.
Although this is something Clapper said he has been interested in for some time now, the opportunity has just recently presented itself.
“A couple of days ago this scholarship showed up in an email that was sent department-wide that was going to be for Native American students that wanted work that emphasized their creativeness, their nativeness and promote the department at the same time,” Clapper said.
Clapper said he has never been down to Oklahoma. After he received his English undergraduate degree from Penn State in 2011 he took some time off school before looking into graduate school. During this time, he worked in a movie theatre in Northeast Pennsylvania before coming to Idaho, he said.
Clapper will be visiting in August because that is when the Poncas will have their annual Pow Wow and he is interested in experiencing that, he said. This will be the second time a member of his family will be embarking on a similar trip.
His mother attempted to reconnect with her biological mother years ago, but she didn’t have a positive experience, Clapper said. This has him keeping cautious as his trip inches closer, he said.
“I am definitely cautious because I don’t know what exactly she said to who or anything like that,” Clapper said. “I don’t know what to expect, the whole thing is kind of a mystery to me.”
Over the last few years, Clapper said he and his mother have had a strained relationship, but as he has begun to prepare for this trip in recent months he has attempted to learn more about what happened with his mother when she traveled to Oklahoma herself.
She has been somewhat hesitant to give him any kind of information regarding it, but she holds all of the puzzle pieces that he hopes to unlock on his trip, he said.
He is receiving the funding through a variety of donations and he hopes that other students in the future can have a similar opportunity. Clapper said he would like to thank the UI English Department, the MFA program, Bret Shepard and Kim Barnes for the support and help they have offered him during this process, as well as his family and friends for all of the support they have given him.
Joshua Gamez can be reached at arg-news@uidaho.edu or on Twitter @Gamez_VN