Why should we care about dying languages Cherokee

[Music]

in 2005

i was a senior at the university of

north carolina at chapel hill

and i enrolled in a class called native

americans

in the 20th century i went into the

class thinking

why do native americans still want to be

different

from everyone else why can’t they just

assimilate

and speak english and be the same

through that class i came to learn the

history

of native nations in this country and i

also came to learn

that the us government had its own

approaches to educating

native americans the policy

was one of assimilation where

you take native american children from

their families

and force them to attend boarding

schools

where they are not allowed they were not

allowed to speak their native languages

they were not allowed to practice their

religions

they were forced to speak english they

were forced to practice christianity

and in my own life as a child growing up

in the 80s and 90s

i was bombarded with the melting pot

metaphor

where we expected immigrants to this

country

to assimilate to abandon

their own languages and

to become american whatever that is

so these policies and attitudes that

we’ve had towards people that might be

different or perceived as different

carried forth and they come

from a long history the boarding schools

had this

ideology that one must kill the indian

in order to save the man

rebecca nagle a cherokee nation citizen

and journalist

writes that adjusted for inflation the

united states government spent

three billion dollars to support native

american boarding schools

from 1877 to 1918.

boarding schools broke the transmission

of language and culture and shared

family values

because they destroyed the bonds between

children and their elders

the last residential boarding school in

our country closed

in 1973

and then following boarding schools

many educational systems adopted

english-only policies

for education during the second half of

the 20th century

native children and the children of

immigrants were

not allowed to be taught in their

languages

they were expected to only learn and be

taught in english

the thing is is that it’s very difficult

to become fluent in a language after

childhood requires a lot of input

and it’s difficult to get that when

you’re no longer a child

so these policies of assimilation and

boarding schools were

unfortunately highly effective

in that now the vast majority

of native american people speak english

as their first and often only

language

in 2010 i was a graduate student at

columbia university in ethnomusicology

but i had continued to hold this

interest in languages

and i began to wonder what role can

music play

in language revitalization and when i

thought about where i would inquire

about this further

i realized why not come back

to my home state here in north carolina

where i can

look at how the eastern band of cherokee

indians

is working to preserve the cherokee

language so i came here and i met all

these wonderful

cherokee people and

they said oh cool you you’re a musician

and you

write songs and you’re you’re learning

the language and i said this is great

hey guess what you’re not just going to

be the person that’s

studying music used for language

revitalization

guess what we’re hiring you and you’re

going to be the music teacher at our

cherokee language immersion school

ah so i began working

for a new gadua academy which is the

cherokee language

immersion school here about 20 miles

over the mountain here in western north

carolina

and new gdua is the inversion of a

boarding school model

in that cherokee is the intended

language of instruction

and bilingualism in english is the goal

so there i taught music and i

collaborated with many wonderful

cherokee speakers including a wonderful

lady named nanny taylor who is my mentor

and she and i translated so many

children’s songs and popular songs

together

including the song the christmas song

what child is this

to the tune green sleeves

[Music]

it’s a neigh

beautiful song so i took this song that

we had translated

and recorded to my second grade class

and i was playing it and they were

sitting there in front of me

and one little boy’s eyes filled up with

tears and they started streaming down

his face

and he said i miss my grandma

and his grandmother had just recently

passed

so all the other students started

wailing

and crying and talking about the people

they had lost

that they missed so hear this song

in cherokee language a beautiful tune

it connected these students to their

community and to their elders

in a way that can’t be quantified by all

the vocabulary lists and grammars in the

world

in saving the language

these children hear the voices of their

elders and their ancestors echo

in their own words

they will carry forward the language

that has made their people unique

for thousands of years even as they’re

part of a broader american

culture where we can share green sleeves

as a beloved tune we

can be a multilingual country

and still be united today

if you drive around the koala boundary

the reservation you’ll see signs that

say

she oddsed we

are still here and the cherokee people

are still here and they’re thriving

however the cherokee language has not

been

as fortunate most recently

i was told that there are 190 first

language speakers remaining

that’s less than one percent of the

tribe

and virtually all of them are senior

citizens

the eastern band of cherokee indians has

spent millions of its own funds

mostly from casino and gaming revenues

towards language revitalization programs

this includes

the language immersion school for the

children as well as a dirt

adult immersion programs studies have

shown

that programs for reconnecting

indigenous youth

with their languages and cultures reduce

social and health ailments such as drug

abuse

so there’s value in preserving the

language beyond

just saving the language itself

so as i worked with nougadu academy

i came to see how much saving cherokee

language

mattered to the cherokee people

and then as i was in their community and

became part of their community

it mattered to me too and i realized

that i could contribute something

even though i’m not an enrolled member

of the tribe even though i’m not a

native person

i have something to offer to help

saving indigenous languages relies

on individuals to make a difference

you can throw all the money in the world

at the problem

and it won’t save the languages

because it requires individuals day in

and day out to take action

and even those of us who aren’t native

can contribute

and learn something in order to help

keep these languages alive

you might wonder why should i care

it’s not my language and there’s an

appeal to science

here as well and that multilingualism is

very powerful in that

it gives us a different way of

understanding and perceiving the world

and this can result in technological and

scientific advancement

for humankind to illustrate

do you remember the states of matter

from physics

you learn solid liquid gas and maybe

if you’re a good student you remember

plasma

we learned these in school in science

class and they are

part of the natural order of the world

in our minds that’s just how the world

is

that’s how it’s organized because that’s

what we learn in english

however cherokee has a different way

of understanding matter it uses a

classificatory verb system

with five categories to talk about the

physical properties of objects

solid flexible long rigid

liquid and living

so for instance in the cherokee language

you have five forms

of the verb for to have

so let’s say i have a jar of water

aguine ha i have a liquid

now let’s say i take an ice cube out of

that jar of water

agiha i have a solid

now let’s say i have a friendly

purring cat cat is weisha

and cherokee weisha

i have a living cat

now let’s say my cat had to go in for

surgery

and it’s lying there unconscious on the

table

and i pick it up

i have a flexible cat

god forbid my cat doesn’t make it

through surgery

and 24 hours later

his rigor mortis waysha aguaya

i have a rigid cat

less morbidly i could also just say

gonza aguera i have a

stick so cherokee

grammatically requires that whoever

speaking it

pays attention to these different

qualities of objects

that are different from what we use in

english

so it categorizes and organizes the

world

in a unique way to cherokee language

i’m now the director of the cherokee

language program at western carolina

university

and i have many non-cherokee

people like many of you that take my

cherokee language classes

both in-person classes and we also offer

online classes

many of these people are classroom

teachers from the area

who want to have a greater understanding

of cherokee culture

so they can relate better to the

cherokee students in their classrooms

or their community members who want

to have some better sense of this

indigenous language that’s unique to

this place

and to the community around them

each little bit of cherokee language

that we learn

as individuals we carry forward with us

that’s one part more part of that

survives

whether we’re fluent or not and while we

can’t

reverse our nation’s past mistakes

towards indigenous peoples we can

throw our support behind the

preservation of our country’s endangered

languages

and in doing so we also preserve some of

our lesser-known histories

knowledges and perspectives that are

unique to this place

such as junalaska

june lahoski who was a cherokee leader

from this region in the early 19th

century

and as americans all of us

as americans in preserving our country’s

indigenous languages

we also hold true to that motto a

pluribus unum

that we are out of one out of many

one not because we

eradicate our differences

but because we celebrate them as our

greatest

strength thank you

[Music]

you