09/03/2026
Ana Frease had never heard her ancestral language spoken by an ancestor, until she sat in an archive at the University of California, Berkeley, and listened to a wax cylinder recording made generations ago.
“It was my first time actually hearing it spoken as it used to be spoken,” said Frease, a junior history major at Ohio University Chillicothe.
Frease, who is Coast Miwok on her father's side, traveled to Berkeley this summer for the Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous California Languages, a program held in partnership with UC Berkeley's linguistics department and the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival. The Coast Miwok are Indigenous to southern Sonoma and Marin counties, north of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Read more about Ana's research experience at ohio.edu/news/2026/09/ohio-chillicothe-student-reconnects-ancestral-language-through-uc-berkeley-research