Eastern Cherokees look to kids for language revitalization

Immersion students from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians sing in Cherokee during a joint council meeting in April. (Photo by Will Chavez)

By Will Chavez
Staff Writer

CHEROKEE, N.C. – Adults of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians are looking to the younger generations to save the Cherokee language as the tribe’s immersion program opens a new school.

The school, called the Kituwah Academy, is expected to have four pre-school classrooms and a kindergarten class when it opens this fall, with plans for a fifth pre-school class in December.

Renissa Walker, Kituwah Preservation and Education Program manager, said children are enrolled in the academy when they are 12 to 15 months old. About 35 children are expected to attend the academy, with the number increasing to 45 when the fifth pre-school class opens.

“The next year we will have about 54. We will grow our numbers by about nine to 12 each year,” she said.

Each year the academy expects to add a grade, just like the Cherokee Nation does with its immersion school. This fall the CN will add a fourth grade, and there are plans to add fifth and sixth grades in the future.

With the EBCI school doing well, Walker said more young adults are also interested in learning the Cherokee language.

“What we’ve seen is a greater turnout by young adults being interested in the language. The tribe’s Cherokee Speakers Bureau continues to increase in numbers because in the past year the bureau began inviting second-language learners to its meetings,” she said.

Second-language learners include young people wanting to speak Cherokee. They are required to use the language as much as possible during CSB meetings.

“The attitudes the speakers have toward the second-language learners have changed, too. Before they would be holding back or making fun of the way people said things. Now they are being more encouraging to the students,” Walker said.

The EBCI has about 300 fluent speakers, but 90 percent of them are over 50 years old, and the tribe is losing an average of 18 speakers a year.

Walker said she understands most of these elders do not want to attend school to get a teaching certificate, but those speakers are welcome to contribute by going to immersion classrooms a few hours a day to speak and interact with the children.

Even though elders may not want a teaching certificate, some young people do. Walker said she is encouraging these people to get their teaching certificates and become more immersed in the language.

Two second-language learners were invited by Walker to serve as co-teachers in the immersion classrooms, where they will learn how to speak Cherokee better from the lead teacher.

Angela Squirrel, a language specialist assistant, is one of the co-teachers at the Kituwah Academy and is expected to receive her teaching certificate later this year. She said she taught the language at a nearby public school for three years before going to the academy in 2008.

“I’m learning right along with the little ones,” Squirrel said.

One of her apprehensions about working at the academy, she said, was working with fluent speakers because in the past some speakers have been less than encouraging when she spoke Cherokee. But the lead teachers have been helpful, she said.

EBCI Language planning consultant Heidi Altman said the tribe has a 10-year plan for language revitalization focusing on immersion classes for children, establishing the Kituwah Academy and revitalizing the language in the communities.

The first three-year phase is nearly over, Altman said, and the focus shifts to developing the academy and encouraging community language revitalization.

“The level of language awareness and participation in the community has gone way, way up from what it was five or 10 years ago. You actually hear people out speaking the language,” she said. “It’s really an exciting time with all this positive energy going toward it (language). The fluent speakers are really stepping up and taking charge of a lot of things, which is great.”

Altman also gives credit to the children learning the language for influencing the tribe’s fluent speakers to help.

“As soon as those babies got to the point where they started speaking the language and they could talk to older people…everyone got choked up,” she said. “That’s been the catalyst for the language coming back, seeing those babies grow up as speakers.”