Biography

I have had a singular life in so many ways. My globe trotting experiences have made me strive to better understand the cultures and histories of the peoples I have met. I am an ethnohistorian, an academic, and an artist because of the many places I have lived.

It may seem absurd or maybe cliche to begin so early in my life, but I attribute a great deal of my career to my early childhood. My father was in the Army and got stationed in Korea during the early 1980s. My mother, sister and I joined him in Pusan after he had settled in. Not long after we moved to Seoul. I learned Korean from my Ajumma, or auntie, during a period when my parents had to travel to Hawaii with my sister. The cultural exposure and linguistic variety I experienced in Korea laid the foundation of cultural curiosity that has fueled my academic interests.

My family returned to the United States just before I started elementary school. We lived shortly in Dale City, Virginia before moving to Annapolis, Maryland. I did not move again till college, but thanks to my parents and public school music programs I was able to travel around the US and Canada. It was in a posh suburb of Annapolis that I had a second epiphany. I discovered the ability to produce rhythmic music on cardboard map tubes. I played them like the trumpet my dad was teaching me to play. It was not until I heard a didjeridoo on a CD that I realized what I had been doing. My lifelong fascination with Australian Aboriginal history, music and art defined me in public school, earning me the nickname “Outback.”

My anthropological and ethnomusical interests brought me to the unlikely campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown. By the late 1990s I was determined to emigrate to Australia which I did after completing my Anthropology degree in three years. I moved immediately after graduating to a country in myopic preparations for the 2000 Olympics. I worked with a Palawaha (Tasmanian) Aboriginal Archaeological company examining the building sites of many of the Olympic facilities. It was doing this that made me realize my limitations and propelled me back into school in the US.By the time I found myself back in Morgantown as the Opening Ceremonies at Homebush Stadium were underway.

I entered graduate coursework at WVU in January of 2001. The focus of my interests had shifted to Native American Cultural Resource Management issues, but the questions remained very much the same. I had heard that West Virginia was a “no-man’s land” and a “common hunting ground.” I took this historical black-hole as a personal and academic challenge that I continue to sort through today. I finished my certification in CRM, got married and moved to the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia to finish up writing my Master’s thesis. It was not long before the limitations of an MA in History prompted me to re-enter graduate school.

During the 2006-2007 school year I taught 7th grade math at Warm Springs Middle School in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. This was a great experience but it bolstered my growing desire to get a PhD. I was teaching about statistics and decided to gather census data for my students to show the uses of statistical analysis. I collected enough for the lesson and then continued collecting census data for the rest of the school year. By the summer of 2007, I had race data at the county level in West Virginia and the surrounding five states from 1790-2000. The final results were my first introduction to GIS and while deeply flawed further whetted my appetite for difficult academic questions.

I received my letter of acceptance to WVU's PhD History program three days after finding out that I was going to have a son later that year. In the summer my family uprooted again, this time just south of Morgantown to split the distance for our various teaching jobs. My son was born late in September of 2007 as I was beginning my GTAship. I spent many hours rocking him to sleep as I graded papers and prepared for comps. The pressures of the graduate program and its concomitant financial strains sadly led to an irreparable rift in our family.

In 2013, I moved to Charleston to continue my work on Kanawha-New River Indian history and archaeology. I supported my research by working at the University of Charleston and Bluefield State online and continued substitute teaching in Kanawha County Public Schools. My son joined me and my new wife in Charleston as we blended our two families together. Meanwhile, my research was supported and enriched by so many people and organizations, such as the WVAS/CWVA and many friends across the state. Each hope that my work will invigorate a robust conversation about the history of the state before Europeans settled.

In April 2017, my wife sought and was offered a teaching position in San Jose, California. I likewise accepted a position as a Middle School teacher in the same Public Charter network. So now, from our San Jose aprtment, I am beginning anew my research and searching for continued opportunities to work with new indigenous communities. While I will always be interested in and advocate for the indigenous history of West Virginia, I hope to continue this work with other indigenous peoples, as well. Ironically, even though I am an historian, I am always looking to the future for new and exciting adventures. Thank you for reading, cheers, paselo neahw.