SML_Vol.12-Iss.5 TRAVIS:Layout 1 9/5/12 12:50 PM Page 73
saying “we salute you and your efforts.” On the outside, the Cherokee language seems alive and well. Street signs are in Cherokee. Police officers have Cherokee syllabary on their uniform badges. The pastor of Big Cove Baptist Church gives sermons in Cherokee. But to Tom Belt, the tribe has a long row to hoe. Scattering the Cherokee syllabary around on signs and teaching students their numbers and colors in Cherokee doesn’t count in his eyes as keeping the language alive. “One language is not just a code for another language,” said Belt, a fluent speaker and Cherokee studies professor at Western Carolina University. “It’s more than just a communicative tool. Language is the core of the culture. It is a way of being.” Belt said the loss of the Cherokee language wasn’t noticed until it was nearly too late. “Our language was always around, and there were always people who spoke it. You thought there was a never ending supply and it was always going to be there,” Belt said. “Suddenly, we realized we were in a critical situation. We had no new speakers. We had no one to replace them.” On the heels of that realization came an even
than simply teaching it graver one: that the to the next generation, Cherokee language is a however. Proponents fundamental part of early on realized it what it means to be would take a highly Cherokee. complex strategy on “Language is the several fronts. way in which we “When we started interpret the world,” out we weren’t sure Belt said. “It is a way of how to do it,” Jackson looking at the world, a said. way of thinking. Until recently, for Within the language example, Cherokee there is a storehouse of Western Carolina University's Cherokee didn’t count as a wisdom and knowledge Language Program is helping create muchneeded children’s books in Cherokee, including foreign language in the that goes back the latest Animal Colors by Beth Fielding and eyes of universities and hundreds of years.” published by Waynesville’s EarlyLight Books. colleges. It posed a Researchers outside conundrum for high Cherokee have turned school students, who had to choose between to fluent speakers to help unlock that giving up coveted course time in their school knowledge. An ethno botanist has been day for Cherokee language versus a bona fide systematically recording Cherokee words for foreign language that would pass muster with native plants and trees. college admissions officers. “In it you find out a little bit more about the “I learned Spanish before I learned innate properties and qualities of those plants. Cherokee,” said Teria Morgan, a recently Embedded in that identification process is graduated high school senior from Cherokee, what that plant is for,” Belt said. who had to plug away at Spanish during high Revitalizing a dying language takes more
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