 I
believe Cherokee is one of the world’s most beautiful languages spoken
today, very gentle and melodic. To me, hearing it is like hearing the
sounds of the waves of a deep blue lake washing over the gray stones along
the shore, soft and rolling but coming from a deeper source...
When I was a little boy everyone I knew spoke Cherokee. When we went
to the store or church or visiting neighbors, someone would always look
at me and smile and say, “Siyo, tohitsu?” Hello, how are you?
I would smile back and as I had been taught, say, “Osda, nihina?”
I’m well. And how are you?
America’s Native languages are in trouble. Of the over 200 Native
American languages spoken today, less than 20 are spoken by their tribal
children and of these 20, only 5 are considered to be thriving by ethnological
standards. In order for a language to thrive, it must reinvent itself
in a way that embraces a changing world, inventing and reinventing words
that capture changes and incorporate them into the culture. Luckily
for the Cherokee people, our language is considered one of the five
but even our language is threatened.
Tribal languages and customs in the United States and Canada faced
near extinction for many reasons but in particular because of U.S and
Canadian government-designed forced assimilation policies. Some of these
policies remained active until the late 1960’s into the early 1970’s.
One policy was particularly harsh…and effective…at assimilating
the most vulnerable of the Native people, the children.
 In
the last part of the 1800’s and through the 1950’s, policies
passed by the U. S. Congress and enacted for the “benefit” of
America’s tribal people, strongly encouraged and often forced tribal
children as young as four years old to attend government-run boarding
schools, sometimes hundreds of miles from their tribes and families. My
grandmother and mother were sent to such boarding schools.
At these schools, speaking Native languages was forbidden and called
“uncivilized” and “backward”. Anyone caught speaking
his or her tribal language or practicing any Native ritual met with
cruel punishments ranging from scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush
(my mother’s punishment) to being locked in isolation for days
at a time to being beaten. However, learning “civilized” skills
was encouraged. The skills that were taught included sewing and cooking
for girls and repairing and plowing for boys and of course, learning
to speak English for both.
When many of these children were able to return to their tribes, they
either could no longer speak their tribal languages or were ashamed
to do so. Additionally, the parents of these children received the message
from the government loud and clear. In order for their children to survive
in a “civilized” world they must learn to speak English and
forget their tribal languages and customs. These parents had been told
over and over again that these were only fragments of a dying people
and had to be abandoned if their tribe, through their children and “civilization”,
was to survive at all.
 Native
America’s tribal languages are treasures and those old ones who have
maintained the gift of their tribal language and customs in spite of the
hardships of doing so are treasures as well. These languages and people
are not fragments of “backward” civilizations, but vestments
of cultures thousands of years old, steeped in ancient thought that cannot
be replaced. These vestments have survived to the present, surviving beyond
the western world’s models of great “civilized” languages
and cultures like as Greek and Roman.
If you are a tribal person, learn your tribal language to your best
ability. If you speak your tribal language, teach someone else to speak.
Parents and grandparents, teach your children who they are through their
own language. The two greatest gifts we can receive from our elders
and pass on to the next generation are identity and belonging.
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