Program immerses students in Cherokee (fwd)

[Phil Cash Cash]

Program immerses students in Cherokee

Tulsa World
8/23/2003

LOST CITY (AP) -- The kindergarten teacher speaks to her class in
Cherokee, telling the children to pull out their mats for nap time.

She calls out their names in Cherokee, telling "Yo-na," or Bear, to
place his mat away from "A-wi," or Deer. Soft Cherokee music lulls them
to sleep.

Their parents were mocked for speaking Cherokee. Their grandparents
punished. But Cherokee is the only language these children will speak
in their public school classroom.

Lost City is the first public school class to immerse students in the
American Indian language in Oklahoma. Another public school class is
being planned by the Eastern band of Cherokees in North Carolina at
Swain County High School.

Cherokee Nation Chief Chad Smith spoke to educators at a meeting last
year and told them the language is dying.

Fewer than 8,000 of the 100,000 Cherokees in Oklahoma can speak the
language fluently, and most of those who can are older than 45.

Smith said his father was punished for speaking Cherokee at Sequoyah
High School in Tahlequah, the seat of Cherokee government.

"If you spoke the language, your mouth was washed out with soap," he
said. "It was an effort to destroy the language, and it was fairly
successful."

Assimilation policies once discouraged the use of the native language in
schools, he said. Harry Oosahwee, the tribe's language projects
supervisor, said he was mocked and ridiculed for speaking his first
language in his public school.

Annette Millard, the school superintendent, spoke to Smith at the
meeting and was determined to do her part to preserve the language.

She runs a school that sits on 40 acres off a winding country road
outside the small town of Hulbert. Sixty-five of the 100 students are
members of the Cherokee tribe.

"It is important to them that they are able to learn about their culture
and language and speak as much of it as possible," she said.

"The language is going to be gone if we don't do something, and the best
people to learn are kids in the developmental stage of kindergarten."

She started learning the language along with her staff.

The Cherokee Nation has paid the salaries of the teacher and an
assistant in the hope that the younger generation will renew the
culture of their ancestors by learning the disappearing tongue.

Ten children are currently enrolled in the class. Next year, the
immersion class will be held for first grade, and the students will
continue with these classes as they move through the school.

Chief Smith hopes the Cherokee Nation has acted in time.

"The vessel that holds the culture," he said, "is the language."