Cherokee Nation Hosts First-Language Speaker Gathering

Cherokee first language gathering 2024
Cherokee Nation Deputy Chief Bryan Warner addresses the annual gathering of fluent Cherokee speakers.

TAHLEQUAH, OK – The Cherokee Nation held its annual first-language, fluent speaker luncheon to honor the tribe’s 1,500 Cherokee speakers and hundreds of second-language learners, and celebrate the tribe’s momentum to perpetuate the Cherokee language.

“Today is about celebrating our fluent speakers and looking at the generation coming up and making sure we have opportunities for them to learn and use our language,” said Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. “Cherokee is the chain that links us back to our creation. We are making a choice to take what makes us unique and care for our language, versus casting it aside as if it’s no longer relevant.”

Hundreds of Cherokee speakers gathered for the event where they visited in their native language, listened to songs in Cherokee and heard about new Cherokee translation projects. Chief Hoskin announced that the Cherokee Nation Language Department and Cherokee Film are partnering with Amazon Prime Video to dub the television series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power in Cherokee.

Chief Hoskin also announced that the tribe’s Cherokee translation team is currently working to produce a new Cherokee language edition of the Cherokee Nation Constitution in honor of the 25th anniversary of the tribe’s 1999 constitutional convention. The new edition will feature commissioned Cherokee artwork in a bound volume of the English and Cherokee language versions of the tribe’s governing document.

“It’s good to come together in fellowship with our many Cherokee speakers from all our different communities and see them visiting in our language,” said Deputy Chief Bryan Warner. “It’s really just a bright day in the Cherokee Nation to celebrate our language and our speakers who carry on our spoken word handed down from our Creator and ancestors.”

Since taking office in 2019, Chief Hoskin and Deputy Chief Warner have worked with the Council of the Cherokee Nation to invest historic resources – more than $68 million – into capital projects for the Cherokee language. Those range from breaking ground on a new Cherokee Immersion Middle School, building a Cherokee Speaker Village and purchasing land for a Kenwood Cultural Reserve, among others. Since the inception of the tribe’s Speaker Services program in 2022, the Cherokee Nation has also completed 1,700 projects ranging from home replacements, ramp walkways, utility payments and home appliances for first-language speakers totaling more than $34 million.

Earlier this year, Chief Hoskin and Deputy Chief Warner signed into law a permanent Durbin Feeling Language Preservation Act that sets aside a minimum budget of $18 million annually for Cherokee language perpetuation. This year, the Council approved Chief Hoskin and Deputy Chief Warner’s proposed increase in the budget to more than $20 million.

Other language efforts include the Cherokee Language Master Apprentice Program, which teaches adults to be proficient conversational Cherokee speakers and teachers. Participants receive an hourly educational stipend and typically spend 40 hours per week for two years immersed in the Cherokee language with master-level, fluent Cherokee speakers. Nearly 60 adults have graduated from the program so far.

“Sometimes when we go to gatherings there might only be four of five Cherokee speakers there, but at the speaker gathering there is quite a lot so we get to talk to them all in Cherokee,” said Lou Bark, a first-language speaker from Spavinaw who attended.