A public ceremony honoring healing and renaming.

Building 103 (formerly Dawes House) Healing and Renaming Ceremony

October 17, 2024

Building 103 Healing and Renaming Ceremony
Led by Turtle Island Hand Talk (TIHT)

Livestream

Building 103 Healing and Renaming Ceremony Livestream

Gallaudet University, in collaboration with the Turtle Island Hand Talk Healing Ceremony committee, held a Healing and Renaming Ceremony on Thursday, October 17, 2024. During the event, Building 103 was officially renamed to òkànkwèpihëna tëtpi / Circle of Signers as part of a healing process acknowledging the harmful impact caused by Senator Dawes to Native Americans.

On Kendall Green, there is a building that was originally named after Senator Henry L. Dawes, who served on the Gallaudet Board of Directors for 34 years. Senator Dawes initiated The Dawes Act of 1887, which gave the government the authority to regulate land rights on tribal territories within the United States. This Act led to catastrophic damage to Native American tribes all over the USA. Lands were stolen, tribes were forced out of their homes, linguistic and cultural genocide occurred, and families were torn apart.

The Native/Indigenous Deaf community, consisting of alumni and community members, requested a name change in response to numerous complaints from Native/Indigenous students, staff, faculty, and alumni. Gallaudet’s Board of Trustees voted in 2021 to retire the name of Dawes House and temporarily renamed it Building 103.

Gallaudet worked with Turtle Island Hand Talk (TIHT), an Indigenous Deaf organization, on a process to rename Building 103. TIHT surveyed Native/Indigenous persons to discuss potential names. These names were then shared with the Gallaudet community to get feedback.

The Board of Trustees approved the new name, òkànkwèpihëna tëtpi/Circle of Signers, as the official name of Building 103. The name is in Lenape, the language that was spoken by the Nacotchtank and Piscataway Peoples, the First Residents of the land that would become the District of Columbia.

We gathered on October 17, 2024

Building 103 Healing and Renaming Ceremony
Led by Turtle Island Hand Talk (TIHT)

Schedule of Events

11:30 a.m.
Grand Entry/Procession of Flags

12 – 1 p.m.
Healing and Renaming Ceremony

1 – 3 p.m.
Reception

Turtle Island Hand Talk Healing Ceremony Committee

Gallaudet logo
Robin Massey
Biography
Dr. Melanie McKay-Cody headshot
Dr. Melanie McKay-Cody
Biography
Johnny Reininger, Jr. headshot
Johnny Reininger, Jr.
Biography
Dr. Wanette Reynolds headshot
Dr. Wanette Reynolds
Biography
Nancy Rourke
Nancy Rourke
Biography
Hallie Zimmerman
Hallie Zimmerman
Biography
Steven Brunelle

Steven Brunelle

Biography
Paola Morales del Castillo

Paola Morales del Castillo

Biography
Ralynn Skeets

Ralynn Skeets

Biography
Gabriel Yazzie

Gabriel Yazzie

Biography
Carol Smith

Carol Smith

Biography
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We, Native Deaf People, Are Still Here!

You are invited to explore the We, Native Deaf People, Are Still Here! exhibition at the National Deaf Life Museum at Chapel Hall

Explore The Exhibition

Frequently Asked Questions

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Robin Massey

Robin Massey was born and raised in Georgia and is of Cherokee origin. She earned a BA in ASL Studies from Gallaudet University and a Master’s in Teaching American Sign Language Program from McDaniel College, also worked in various schools, including New Mexico School for the Deaf and Maryland School for the Deaf, Columbia Campus. Now she works for ASL Center, ASL2 Program and JumpStart ASL Program at Gallaudet University and advisor to the Indigenous People Student Alliance (IPSA).

Dr. Melanie McKay-Cody

Dr. Melanie McKay-Cody is a Cherokee Deaf and earned her doctoral degree in linguistic and socio-cultural anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. She has studied critically-endangered Indigenous Sign Languages in North America since 1994 and helps different tribes preserve their tribal signs. She also specialized in Indigenous Deaf studies and interpreter training incorporating Native culture, North American Indian Sign Language and ASL. She is also an educator and advocate for Indigenous interpreters and students in educational settings. She has also taught ASL classes in several universities, schools and communities for over 44 years. She is one of eight founders of Turtle Island Hand Talk, a new group focused on Indigenous Deaf/Hard of Hearing/DeafBlind and Hearing people.

Johnny Reininger

Johnny Reininger is a longtime advocate of the Deaf Community who has spent most of his adult life recognizing and fighting for the needs of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, with a major focus amongst Native Nations.

Johnny currently serves as a member for the ADA Committee for the City of Midwest City, Building Manager for the Oklahoma City Association for the Deaf (OKCAD), Member-At-Large of the Oklahoma Association of the Deaf (OAD), Treasurer for Turtle Island Hand Talk, and was the formal Coordinator for Deaf Awareness Day (DAD) at the Oklahoma State Fair.

In 2009 he was recognized by OKCAD for his work in bringing Deafnation Expo to Oklahoma City. In 2017 the OAD recognized Johnny for his litigation against the State of Oklahoma. The State Fair of Oklahoma recognized Johnny for his work as Deaf Awareness Day Coordinator from 2016 until 2022.

Johnny is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. He is a graduate of the Oklahoma School for the Deaf and comes from a large Deaf family. He Is married to an outstanding, supportive wife and has three children, all who are Deaf. He holds two Associate’s Degrees from Oklahoma State University, One in Architecture in CADD emphasis and the other in Building Inspection.

Wanette Reynolds

Wanette Reynolds, a proud member of the Cherokee Nation, was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, into a multigenerational deaf family. She is the fourth of six CODAs, with a deep connection to both Cherokee and Deaf cultures. Her mother, Lois Reynolds, and her father, Ellis Dick Senior, who was born in 1894 in Indian Territory before Oklahoma became a state, are both Cherokee and Deaf. Ellis’s grandmother survived the Trail of Tears, a tragic chapter in Cherokee history enacted by the Dawes Act of 1887. Wanette’s Cherokee Deaf family members, as well as her father, Bill Reynolds, attended the Oklahoma School for the Deaf.

Following in the footsteps of her mother and aunt, Linda Calvert, who attended Gallaudet University, Wanette earned her Ph.D. in Linguistics from Gallaudet in 2016. Now living in Long Beach, California, she is a professor in the American Sign Language Linguistics and Deaf Cultures (ASLD) program at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). Her work focuses on the importance of ASL input for deaf and CODA children and examines language acquisition patterns, reflecting her deep commitment to her heritage and family legacy.

Nancy Rourke

Nancy Rourke’s name sign is N3 for the three primary colors she uses in her artworks. Art has been her primary language. She attended Rochester Institute of Technology and graduated with a master’s degree in computer graphic design and painting. Nancy launched her De’VIA (Deaf View / Image Art) expressionism works in 2010 and has not stopped since. Her artworks are on permanent display in the Silesian Museum in Katowice, Poland. Nancy is an enrolled member of Mesa Grande Band of Mission Indians in the Kumeyaay Nation in California. She lives in Colorado.

Hallie Zimmerman

Hallie Zimmerman, originally from Winnebago, Nebraska, grew up in a rural environment and developed a strong appreciation for country living. As an enrolled member of the Winnebago and Omaha tribes in Nebraska, She also has a rich cultural heritage, she values her Native American heritage and is particularly proud of her descent from Susan La Flesche Picotte, the first Native American physician in the United States. Zimmerman balances her role as a nurturing mother of two remarkable children and a supportive partner. In her professional life, she runs HZ Creativity Designs, a small business she has managed for 17 years. She is also one of the founders of Turtle Island Hand Talk (TIHT), an organization that strives to unite Indigenous Deaf, Hard of Hearing, DeafBlind, and hearing individuals. Zimmerman is a passionate advocate for Indigenous Deaf Rights and Education. These efforts reflect her commitment to giving back to the Indigenous Deaf communities.

Steven Brunelle

Steven Brunelle is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. Worked in different capacities for the tribal government and college in the 1990s as a marketing director of the Turtle Mountain Casino & Bingo ( now Sky Dancer Casino), Low-Power TV contract, Deaf Advocate for the Tribal Court and Tribal Vocational Rehabilitation, Turtle Mountain Chippewa College as ASL Instructor and Caretaker of the Anishinaabeg Intercultural Center. In the early 2020s, he studied Plains Indian Sign Language under Hubert Black Wolf from the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, as a contract for the Gesture Literacy to develop Plains Indian Sign Language signs. He is currently teaching ASL at Lakeville North High School in MN.

Paola Morales del Castillo

Paola Morales del Castillo (ancestry Matlatzinca/Nicarao) was born in Mexico City, and migrated at an early age with her deaf parents along ancient indigenous routes to Los Angeles. Paola has a multilingual, multiethnic, multicultural deaf family ancestry that is detribalized indigena and afrodescendiente Mexican and Nicaraguan roots, and identifies as a heritage signer and speaker, and Coda of Color (CodaC)/ Hija de padres sordos (Hopas). For over twenty years, Paola has worked in the private and public sector as an bimodal multilingual ASL/English/Spanish and LSM (Lengua de señas mexicana) Deaf-Parented Sign Language Interpreter, and has cultivated an Integrated Model of Interpreting practice.

Paola served in different capacities as a translator, editor, liaison, facilitator, coordinator, sign language interpreting mentor, project consultant across Turtle Island, Anahuac, and Abya Yala working with diverse Deaf, DeafBlind, DeafDisabled, Hard of Hearing, and Late-Deafened, Coda families, children, and communities. Paola’s sign language interpretation specializations are in mental health, sign linguistics, STEMS, theater and performing arts, and post-secondary education. Paola is passionate about Deaf World healing from the kyriarchy, re-indigenization and supporting multimodal multilingual spaces while grounding heritage signers, love ethic, and reflective praxis and process-based methods of learning decolonial critical deaf studies, language and disability justice and practices. She has served in several professional national and local roles for the Registry of Interpreters for The Deaf. Currently, Paola is a member of the Turtle Island Hand Talk. She holds a B.A. from University of California at Santa Cruz.

Ralynn Skeets

Yá’át’ééh! (Hello)

My name is Ralynn Skeets and I am Diné (Navajo) who was born and raised in Santa Fe, NM. My family is originally from Ft. Defiance, AZ and Vanderwagon, NM. I graduated last year Spring 2023 from the University of New Mexico (Go Lobos!). I am a freelance interpreter in NM and so far it’s been surreal experience. I look forward to more challenges and the growth in my interpreting profession.

Ahéhee’ (Thank you)

Gabriel Yazzie

Gabriel Yazzie is an interpreter in Phoenix, Arizona who has recently
joined the field of interpreting. After graduating the Phoenix College
Interpreting Program in May 2023, he has gone on to serve the Deaf/HH community in the greater Phoenix Area. Although residing in Mesa, AZ, he is originally from the Dine’ (Navajo) reservation which is primarily located in the Northeast region of Arizona. His mothers clan is Honághááhnii (One Who Walks Around) and his fathers clan is Áshįįhi (Salt People). He is thrilled to bring his diverse background to the interpreting field!

Carol Smith

Carol Smith is a proud Native woman of Cherokee and Kiowa descent. She was born and raised in Southern California to Hearing parents. She became interested in learning ASL and attended the Interpreter Training Program at El Camino College in Torrance, California. She graduated from the program in 1986 and has been interpreting ever since. She recently became involved with Turtle Island Hand Talk and although she is introverted and shy, she does enjoy learning ways of how to contribute to the Native/Indigenous Deaf community. She follows a Cherokee way of life and respects and enjoys learning from all Native tribes on Turtle Island.

She is a cat mom to a Maine Coon named Hollow.