Osiyo,
Words have power in the Cherokee Nation. From contracts and treaties to the Cherokee Nation Constitution, words are the mortar bonding generations of cultural heritage to a modern, worldwide community as one tribe.
No one in our history understood this better than Sequoyah, who created our Cherokee syllabary and made a written Cherokee language possible. His vision continues to unfold today, as we make historic investments through the 2024 Durbin Feeling Language Preservation Act and reinvigorate our language, including at our newly opened, $30 million Cherokee Immersion Middle School in Tahlequah.
Our Cherokee immersion schools in Tahlequah and Greasy and the Durbin Feeling Language Center serve as focal points for language education, but our scope is broad. We hope to reach every Cherokee citizen and encourage them to actively engage with our rich language. To that end, Cherokee Nation recently launched the new Cherokee Nation Language Hub website, which brings together language resources accessible to anyone, at any time.
Developed by the Cherokee Nation Language Department and Kiwa Digital, the language hub offers lessons, recordings of fluent speakers, books, tools and virtual stories all at our fingertips, on desktop and mobile devices.
Special offerings include audio of the Bible’s New Testament in Cherokee and access to a project to preserve recordings of fluent Cherokee speakers called Saving the Voices. This ambitious project is a wealth of language immersion from our elders and other fluent speakers that will include interviews from more than 1,040 first-language, fluent speakers by the end of 2027.
Our Saving the Voices project captures details of Cherokee life that may otherwise have been lost, including details on hunting, fishing, healing methods and even jokes. It’s truly a wealth of knowledge that will be protected and offered freely for generations to come.
The language hub is a place for anyone of any fluency, Cherokee or non-Cherokee. It is an invitation for visitors to immerse themselves in our culture. In doing so — even if a visitor gleans a single Cherokee word — they carry a powerful seed that can help our language flourish again.
Long before European contact, our language and shared stories bonded us as one tribe. Facing oppression, our words helped us regain footing and fight for sovereignty under the Cherokee Constitution. Right now, a language renaissance is gathering momentum that will galvanize our most treasured teachings from being lost to time and ensure our language is actively spoken for generations to come.
Wado,
Chuck Hoskin Jr.
Principal Chief
