Documentary Review of "First Language - The Race to Save Cherokee"

Hello, everyone and welcome back to my blog! I hope that you have all been having a good week so far. For this post, I wanted to switch things up. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to read more and watch more films and documentaries to inform myself more about problems that the world is facing. A few weeks ago, I had the desire to watch a language documentary, which lead me to the documentary called First Language - The Race to Save Cherokee.

This documentary intrigued me, given that it is about the urgency of preserving the Cherokee language. I have also recently been reading more about the active efforts that indigenous people have put forth to pass on their traditions and languages. I find the Cherokee language to be especially relevant in 2019, because many Cherokee speakers seem to be passing away every year. To our dismay, the Cherokee language is classified as an endangered language, having between 11,000-13,000 native speakers according to 2008 estimates. In North Carolina, where the documentary takes place, there are no more than 200 native Cherokee speakers left. This number made my heart sink, but even so, this short documentary gave me hope for a better tomorrow.

It’s truly inspiring to see native Cherokee speakers taking on the role of educators, especially in an immersion school designed to teach young Cherokee about their language and culture in Cherokee. Despite many obstacles that have come their way, including funding, support, and hiring qualified educators, there is now a new generation of Cherokee who is speaking Cherokee at a native level even though many of their parents do not know how to speak it fluently. What I found to be the most remarkable was how dedicated and passionate Cherokee teachers are. They realize that there are little to no textbooks, or resources that are published, or available in Cherokee, so they often spend sleepless nights creating original and translated material for their students in their native language.

Once you learn more about the devastation that the Cherokee have gone through for centuries due to boarding schools that many Cherokee were forced to attend to “learn the white man’s ways”, it makes you very upset. These children were given no choice but to stop speaking Cherokee in order to “perfect” their English, which was deemed to be the superior language. This led to the punishment and prohibition of speaking their “inferior” Cherokee language. Regardless of how you feel about this issue, I encourage you to have deep and meaningful conversations about this situation with your family and friends. I continue to believe that the best way to bring more peace to this world is through conversation. Words are much stronger and powerful than you would think.

Though this is a sad reality, many Cherokee children living in North Carolina are starting to speak Cherokee with the older generations after 60 years of not hearing many Cherokee children speak their so-called heritage language. Since this a documentary review, I don’t want to spoil anything else, so if this is of interest to you, make sure to watch it by clicking the video that I have attached to this post. Qué tengan un buen día!

Love,

Laura