Hello, my name is Kevin Gonzaga and I wanted to briefly inform you about two projects I am simultaneously working on regarding cultural awareness and invite you to consider partnering with me on them by contributing content.
The main project…
Currently I am working at the University of North Dakota with the department of Pathology. I am working on a grant from the Department of Justice to develop online training materials for death investigators around the United States.
Death investigators are the people responsible for determining the official cause of death when it is unknown. While some cities have professional coroners and medical examiners who fulfill this role, this is not the case in all areas of the United States. Some states have very few trained death investigators and as such at times the death investigator of record might be a local volunteer firefighter or veterinarian as this is the most qualified person available. The Department of Justice is aware of problems this can cause and the online training they want developed is an attempt to raise the professional skills of those who may act as death investigators throughout the United States.
The specific aspect of this training I am developing includes cultural concerns and cultural competency. Because funerals are almost without exception associated with religious rites, in a multi-cultural society like ours it is very easy for death investigators to offend the deceased’s family unintentionally as they have contact with the deceased and usually very little cultural awareness. The purpose of the training I am developing is to ensure that death investigators are aware of this risk of offense, are thinking culturally throughout the performance of their duties, and are equipped to work with families to ensure that the body is handled with as much cultural and religious integrity as possible.
The training I am building has two basic sections: recorded lessons and video interviews.
In the recorded sessions I provide information and training regarding cross-cultural work in general. The video interviews will be available to the death investigators to watch for additional information more specific to one cultural or religious group they have or might encounter in the course of their duties. The interviews will be with cultural and religious leaders of various communities as they discuss their specific mortuary rites, concerns about death investigations, and about their culture and/or religion in general.
My side-project…
At the same time I am using this opportunity to work on a side-project of mine. In the interviews I am asking the question: “What are three things you wish everyone in the U.S. knew about your culture/religion?” I will incorporate these answers into the training but I I also plan to use the answers I receive to create a mini-documentary of sorts that will highlight the cultural diversity of the United States and hopefully raise awareness and appreciation of other cultures.
My dilemma…
While I have the time and resources to perform some of these interviews myself I am attempting to be as comprehensive and inclusive with my videos as possible. For example, instead of recording an interview with one Native American elder, I want many different interviews representative of different tribes in order to respect the fact that North America is home to over five hundred different Native American tribes and they are not all the same. In a similar way, instead of recording an interview with one Muslim leader, I want to interview many different ones to reflect the fact that Islam has different religious sects and cultural groups within it. In short, I want as many different interviews and voices as possible and this far exceeds the time and resources I have available to me.
How you can contribute…
This is where I hope you come in. While I cannot interview everyone I want to, I can receive contributions from everyone who wants to contribute. If you are (or know of) an internally recognized authority within your cultural/religious community (an elder, pastor, imam, cleric, priest, rabbi, religious leader, etc.) that could speak on these issues I am inviting you to participate. I have developed simple but specific instructions so that anyone who wants can record an interview along the same guidelines as what I need for both of my projects. This footage can then be submitted to me, after which I will do all necessary editing and most likely incorporate it into both of my projects. My hope is that by receiving such contributed footage I will be able cover far more cultural and religious groups and sub-groups that I would ever have been able to do on my own.
All that is needed to contribute to these projects is a video-recording device (even a good webcam might work), a quiet well-lit, quiet place to record, a willing interviewee, the instructions and a USB storage drive that the footage will be uploaded to and mailed to me on. (I will most likely be able to provide the USB drive and the appropriate envelope and postage.)
Making it your own…
While for the purposes of this training I need some very specific questions answered, I am also very interested in what you want others (not just death investigators) to know about your culture and religion. As such, the instructions for this video and the project as a whole have been designed with a place for you to share about your culture/religion far beyond mortuary rites. So while the required content may only take 20 minutes to cover, if your interview includes fifty minutes of additional cultural/religious information, stories and history it will also be made available to death investigators. Such additional contributions are indeed encouraged..
So how can you get involved?
If you would like to support this project but cannot directly participate, please just get the word out via social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
If have any questions, if you know that you want to participate or know of someone who you think would be interested in contributing, please contact me at:
kevin.gonzaga@med.und.edu
Thank you for your time and for contributing to these two projects.
Sincerely,
Kevin Gonzaga






The last several months and the last several years…
Salt flats in Utah I saw as I started a large transition in my life.
About the last several months…
Last Summer I wrote three of what I consider to be the best and most honest pieces I have ever written. (They can be accessed here, here, and here) They were the fruit of a sober reckoning with my past and my present, which had been growing like a crescendo for years.
I wrote those pieces during another episode of depression in which I had very intentionally isolated myself from friends and family, was considering suicide, and even refused to go to the graduation ceremony for my Masters program.
Many things have changed since I wrote those words in that dark place.
I began taking antidepressants and have done well on them. I reconciled with my family. I moved two times. I continued the trajectory that I was already on, which took me further and further out of the orbit of Christianity and the Church which had previously been the center of my life. I started working out at the gym regularly and got in the best shape of my life. I have seen many friends get engaged and married. I worked at a group home for foster care youth for several months. I applied to two PhD programs in Clinical Psychology and was rejected by both.
In the midst of all these big and small changes, perhaps the most important is that I have refocused and solidified what I believe to be the purpose of my life.
In the three pieces I did last summer I provided a quotation from Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, in which he wrote:
In his book, Dr. Frankl elaborates that what humans need to have meaning in their life is such a task that they fill they, and only they, can work towards with their life. This was born of his experiences in the concentration camps where such scraps of meaning were all that left to motivate men who had lost literally everything else, to continue to struggle to survive.
At the time I had lost sight of the tension I was called to but not even a month later, after driving back down to Pasadena from the trip where I had a major reconciliation with my parents in Modesto, my desire to and my thoughts about working in Native American communities long-term resurfaced strongly after being dormant for some time.
Whatever else happens or changes, whatever I come to believe about God or faith, I know that working to address issues of injustice and inequality in Native American communities makes the most sense of a lot of unique aspects of my life and it is something I have freely chosen to commit myself to.
(Me being me, this also culminated in another long blog post.)
This renewed resolve led me to where I am currently, Grand Forks, North Dakota. Right now I am working in the Seven Generations Center of Excellence at the University of North Dakota as a research assistant working on a grant with our pathology department and the Department of Justice. I am gaining research experience, writing, and learning this year as I prepare to reapply to PhD programs in Clinical Psychology.
Sometimes this move still feels surreal and I have to remind myself that I cannot simply hop into my car and visit friends and family like I have been able to for the last several years. I have only been here a few days and already I have realized that some of my preconceived notions about what life here would be like were wrong, for better and for worse. Regardless, I’m here now, and I’m pretty sure I’m in it for the long haul.
But what of the last three years?
As I enter this new season of life I cannot help but reflect a little bit on the last season of life which was tumultuous to say the least. Words fail me and maybe that is okay because I think a friend who walked with me through those years perhaps said it best.
As I prepared to leave for North Dakota I visited with many friends and one wrote me a very dear letter. In it were the following words:
This short paragraph managed to succinctly name the challenges I faced in the last season of life and the responses to them I very intentionally chose. I chose to explore my relationship with God and others, even the parts that scared me. I chose to be vulnerable with my heart romantically, even after being hurt, and being disappointed many times since. I chose to be open and honest about what was going on. I chose to make sure I was creating a welcoming place (in my heart and home) for everyone, especially those who did not fit in anywhere else, regardless of what was going on with me.
These decisions were deliberate and they were not always easy to follow through on. Sometimes I wondered, like I imagine many people do, if these choices I made for myself and the small sacrifices I made for others over the last several years had gone simply unnoticed. My friend’s words reminded me that they were not forgotten or unnoticed which was an unexpected comfort and affirmation as I prepared for another major transition in life.
In fact, unexpected words like these, from this friend and others, are what have buoyed my spirits and kept me moving through some difficult times in this last season of life. May I learn to be equally generous with words of encouragement to others and regard them as a meaningful act in and of themselves with no agenda other than to lift the spirits of those around me.