What does it mean to reassert educational and linguistic sovereignty in modern-day Oklahoma?
Over one hundred years after the allotment of Cherokee land in Indian Territory and the termination of the Cherokee Nation's tribal council and court systems, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma first opened ᏣᎳᎩ ᏧᎾᏕᎶᏆᏍᏗ/tsalagi tsunadehlogwasdi (lit. Cherokee school), a Cherokee language immersion school. As the program and the funding behind language revitalization grew, the immersion school transformed from a pre-K program to a pre-K through eighth-grade charter school. In addition, the school is now operated in the Cherokee Nation's Durbin Feeling Language Center, also home to the language department's other programs. These include both translation and media offices, which produce all the materials for the school (posters, story books, etc.), and a two-year adult immersion program, designed to produce the language-competent adults needed to staff the school and other language ventures.
This project reflects on the history of Cherokee education over the past several hundred years as well as the contemporary needs and wants of the Cherokee language community at present. The project involved both historical investigation and in-person semi-structured interviews with key community members, including translators, adult immersion instructors, curriculum planners, and other language workers, many of whom are first-language speakers of Cherokee.