Susan Gehr (Karuk)

Consulting Archivist, California Indian Artists’ Archives Project

Susan Gehr has worked variously as a linguist, a librarian, and an archivist. Several years into learning to speak Karuk through community classes, and the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival’s Master-Apprentice Language Learning Program, Gehr finished an MA in linguistics, going on to work on Karuk language documentation and co-publishing the Karuk Dictionary with linguist William Bright. In the course of her work creating and collecting Karuk language materials for the tribe’s language program, Gehr became interested in what role archives and archivists have in Native American languages revitalization. She wrote Breath of Life: Revitalizing California’s Native Languages Through Archives, an oral history of AICLS’ Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous California Languages, for her MLIS thesis at San José State University.