Congratulations to recipients of Alfred A. Cave Scholarships for 2023
Jillian Wessel is a Linguistics student at UF with a passion for the preservation of Native American languages. She has worked with the Native American Oral History project here at UF and now the Choctaw Language Documentation project. Jillian intends to continue developing skills in language revitalization for the benefit of future generations of Indigenous people. She is a member of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma and is learning her native language using resources provided by the Nation.
Levi Strodel is finishing his first year at UF in History and Political Science with a focus on Native American history, something he noticed was largely ignored in high school curriculum. Resolved to grow opportunities for education in Native America at UF, Levi is passionate about student activism and social justice. He plans to attend law school and pursue a specialty in environmental and Federal Indian law.
A child of first-generation Puerto Rican migrants, Paola Rodriguez is concerned about the erosion of social memory for the Indigenous Taino past of her parents’ homeland. Returning to UF after a nearly decade-long hiatus, Paola is committed to the collection and preservation of native narratives that have been silenced by colonial forces. She intends to continue in graduate school with study of the politics of memory making in the context of colonialism.