Earlier this summer, the Canadian Studies Program faced a historic change in leadership when longtime director Irene Bloemraad stepped down after ten years of service. At such a pivotal time, we are grateful to rely on the steady, experienced leadership provided by our interim director, Dr. Richard A. Rhodes. A professor emeritus of linguistics, Rich has been a Canadian Studies affiliate almost since the program's founding, and served as Irene's co-director for several years. But even old friends may wonder what his connection to Canada is, and what sparked his initial interest in the program all those years ago.
Rich was born and raised outside of Philadelphia. He went to Michigan State as an undergraduate, then, after a stint in the US Army that included time in Vietnam, returned to the University of Michigan for grad school in 1971. While still a beginning grad student he was tasked with learning Ojibwe and starting a college-level language class in it, because, at the time, the University of Michigan was under political pressure to have such a class, but no professor wanted to do it. That lead to years of extensive fieldwork in southern Ontario, mostly on the Walpole Island Reserve (near Wallaceburg, ON), but also up and down the Blue Water region from Walpole to Sarnia, and on Manitoulin Island. Rich spent several summers at the University of Western Ontario (London, ON) and Lakehead University (Thunder Bay, ON) as an instructor in the provincial Native Language Instructor Program, teaching native-speaking elementary school teachers from across Ontario basic linguistics and Ojibwe (and Cree) grammar so that they can make better use of curricular resources for their classes.
In 1985, Rich published a dictionary encompassing two dialects of Ojibwe, Odawa and Eastern Ojibwe. After he finished his PhD in 1976 writing about Ojibwe grammar, he was invited to go spend a summer in North Dakota working on Michif, a Métis language that is half Plains Cree and half French. (While primarily spoken in Manitoba, in the 1970’s one of the strongholds of the Michif language was the Turtle Mountain Reservation in Belcourt, ND.) Rich would go on to write many articles on the Michif language and is still a recognized authority. He has also done significant work on Sayula Popoluca, a small, endangered, Indigenous language of southern Mexico.
After finishing his PhD, Rich was hired back by the University of Michigan as a lecturer to continue the Ojibwe language class. (The real teacher in that class was the assistant, a native speaker originally from the Curve Lake First Nation Indian Reserve, near Peterborough, ON.) He was also tasked with teaching a course in the University of Michigan Program in American Cultures on Algonquian culture and folklore, past and present. In 1986, Rich was hired at Berkeley, and soon thereafter he began teaching a course in the Berkeley American Cultures program, drawing in part on the Michigan course. His Berkeley American Cultures course, which was taught more than 20 times over the span of 25 years, had significant Canadian content because of the central role the fur trade played to the history of Native North America.
Professionally, Rich was, until his retirement, active in the international Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, serving in leadership and as the president (2009-2011). Even in retirement, he continues his 50-year long participation in the Algonquian Conference, including having twice been the organizer of the annual meeting. He taught as a visiting professor in Austria several semesters over the course of his career and was twice a guest at the Max Planck Institute at Leipzig. In addition, between 1994-2004 he participated in the Project for the Documentation of the Languages of Mesoamerica.
At Berkeley, he was active in the Faculty Senate from 2007-2022, and served as a dean in the L&S Advising office from 2001 to 2022, with only brief breaks for sabbaticals.
His relevant external service includes having been an external reviewer for the Bachelor of Arts Program in Anishinaabemowin, at Algoma University (Sault Ste. Marie, ON) and having served as an expert witness in a Native land claims case.