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Table of Contents

Cover Story

Cover Story - Spanish Version

Mini-Lesson

Comprehension Quiz

Teacher's Guide and Worksheets

Saving A Native Language

--By Elizabeth Winchester

Walk by the music room at Lost City School, near Hulbert, Oklahoma, and you'll hear unusual sounds. Old MacDonald had a wa-ga and a ka-wo-nu on his farm, shout the students. Those words mean "cow" and "duck" in Cherokee.

In the building next door, kindergarten kids learn everything from colors to numbers to animal names in Cherokee. Students are called by their native Indian names and speak in Cherokee for most of the day. These kindergartners are in the first Cherokee-immersion class in a U.S. public school.

By teaching kids Cherokee and not just English, Lost City School is working to help save a dying language. Fewer than one of every 100 fluent Cherokee speakers are under age 45. Doug Whalen, of the Endangered Language Fund, says all 170 or so Native Indian languages in the United States are at risk of disappearing.

"If we don't learn Cherokee, our grandsons won't know it," says Crystal Braden, a seventh grader. Crystal is Cherokee, as are 65 of the school's 100 preschool through eighth-grade students. Her seventh-grade class just finished making a video to help teach the Cherokee words for colors to younger students.

Fifth grader Kristian Smith is learning words from his little brother, Lane, or A-wi, who is in kindergarten. "It's weird," says Kristian. "I'm the one who should be teaching him!"

The Cherokee word ga-du-gi best sums up the school's efforts. It means "working together for the benefit of the community." At Lost City School, everyone works together in November--American Indian Heritage Month--and all year long.

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