Ꭷ ᏫᏨᏲᎵᎦ ka witsvyoliga “Greetings from me to you (in Cherokee),”
ᎠᏂᏌᎰᏂ ᏗᎩᏴᏫ ᎠᏂᎦᎵᏍᎨᏫ ᏗᎬᎩᏴᏩ ᏩᏕ ᏓᏆᏙᎠ ᎯᏳᏩᏏ ᎣᏦᏛ ᏧᏍᎪᎢ ᏂᏓᏆᏓᎴᏅᎯ ᏓᎵᏆ ᏥᏁᎳ ᏃᏊᏥᎩ ᎦᎵᎡᎵᎦ ᎢᏨᎪᏩᏔᎲᎢ “I am from the Blue Clan and the Foreman family. My name is Wahde or Ryan Mackey. My community is Kenwood, but my family is from Oaks. I now live in Tahlequah, Oklahoma and I am happy to make your acquaintance.”
I am the Program Manager for ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ ᏧᎾᏓᏂᎳᎨᎢ “Cherokee Nation’s Cherokee language Master Apprentice Program (CLMAP)”. Over the course of two years, CLMAP teaches adult Cherokee L2 learners eight hours a day for five days a week in order for them to speak and teach Cherokee. Our program is focused on creating teachers for Cherokee language immersion educational environments. The second year learners spend several hours a week teaching the first year students while both cohorts continue their language learning under the supervision of master L1 Cherokee speaking elders. A small group, learner focused model is used to ensure that our program graduates are highly conversational in the Cherokee language and competent with a wide array of second language acquisition methodologies. This instruction is carried out in the Cherokee language medium, our target language, and our learners most often start as mono-lingual English speakers. Through motivation and discipline, they maintain a Cherokee language immersion environment to develop their L2 through oral production via conversational teaching practices. Grammar is embedded using form focused instruction with minimal overt grammatical instruction. The classroom setting is augmented by regularly occurring and frequent trips to the community and natural settings to ensure that multiple language domains are employed in instructional opportunities. Alongside CLMAP, I now direct three federal Administration for Native Americans (ANA) grants, and am currently developing another language program for the Cherokee Nation’s new ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ ᎠᏂᏫᏒᏍᎩ “Cherokee Language Department''.
There are approximately 2,000 L1 Cherokee speakers and less than fifty highly proficient L2 Cherokee speakers. Our program has graduated twenty new L2 speakers in the last six years and will begin graduating sixteen a year with last year’s program expansion. Our Cherokee population is over 400,000 citizens including all three federally recognized Cherokee tribes. Cherokee Nation, where I work, is headquartered in Tahlequah in what is now the heart of Northeastern Oklahoma. We lose between five and twenty L1 Cherokee speakers a month, but for the first time in forty years we are confident that our language, and with it our cultural identity, will survive into the next generation. In the past we have used the ᏣᎳᎩ ᏧᎾᏕᎶᏆᏍᏗ “Cherokee Language Immersion Elementary School,” as well as community language classes and partnerships with local universities, but haven’t been able to produce speakers of conversational language ability until recently. Our program is ever adapting and adding special projects and programs with the help of grant funding to secure and expand our successes.
I am a second language learner, an L2 at Advanced mid proficiency in the Cherokee language. I am literate, and well versed in our traditional cultural practices and beliefs. I have studied language acquisition for over twenty years with a focus on Cherokee, but I am also learning about and using several indigenous languages including Choctaw, Creek, Yuchi, Natchez, Sac, Delaware, Ponca, Seminole, Caddo, and Maori. I have studied under many elders for language learning purposes but have also formally apprenticed to several traditional healers and ceremonial leaders. I am now a ceremonial chief at one of five active Cherokee ceremonial grounds. These grounds require Cherokee language to be the medium of all ceremonies and public spaces. My grandparents and a few older aunts and uncles were Cherokee speakers, but no one in my generation grew up as L1 speakers. Over the last twenty years I have relentlessly worked to learn as much of the Cherokee language as I have been able.
ᎣᏏᏳ osiyu “sincerely,”
ᎠᏴ ᏩᏕ ᎦᎵᏍᎨᏫ ᎪᏪᎸᎦ ayv wahde galisgewi gohwelvga “afore-signed, Ryan B. Mackey”
The Initial logo for our program (top left), and our first graduating cohort (below).
Portfolio Introduction
I completed my Bachelors of Arts at the University of Oklahoma in 2003 in Native American Studies, Law, Policy, and Education. My professional goals include further expansion of Cherokee language opportunities to all ages of Cherokee language learners, exponentially increasing the number of highly proficient L2 learners and providing an opportunity for each and every Cherokee to access their language and cultural identity. We will ensure that our educational medium is in the Cherokee language and that a new season of young L1 Cherokee speakers will be born within the next generation. This must be done as a part of a movement led by those of us who have become a language family and have committed to the same values and efforts as I have. My portfolio for this master’s degree is the next step in this process. It will highlight the work I have done at the University of Kansas (KU) with how I have applied this knowledge to my professional endeavors. The seven learning objectives that my portfolio will address will include: curriculum and instruction, delivery, standards, assessment, technology in the classroom, identities and inclusive learning contexts, and ending with professionalism and leadership.
*Note, the Ꭷ ka In many of my artifacts, Is a formal and respectful utterance that has transferred into our almost faded, writing tradition. It has no direct translation, but may be interpreted as "greetings", or "salutations".
Educational and Professional Goal
I began the Master of Science in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Education at the University of Kansas (KU) with the goal of cementing my understanding of second language learning, practical theories, and pedagogies from an English language learning perspective. Much of what I have uncovered has been a great asset to further developing our Cherokee language programs to a more successful and academically grounded level of expertise. Although some aspects of our program were initially patterned after other successful adult language immersion programs, the knowledge I have gained at the KU has deepened my understanding of the theoretical foundations of those practices, and further it has provided me with the professional skills to improve the curriculum, instructional methodologies, and strategic approach of all of our language efforts at the Cherokee Nation.
As an example, as a way I have applied my educational experience to my professional duties, I supervise the execution and facilitation of three Administration for Native Americans (ANA) federal grants. This process of professional development and experiential growth has further enabled us to align and create curriculum for the twelve language programs at the Cherokee Nation and has allowed us to unite under one strategic plan, create a committee of Cherokee Nation employees, specifically managers from the Cherokee language programs, and also form an advisory board of Cherokee language speakers and experts in the target language. We have also remade and updated our Cherokee language teacher certification process for both the state of Oklahoma and the Cherokee Nation. Over the last year the coordination of initiatives has pushed a reorganization and all of the Cherokee language programs are now united under one Cherokee Language Department (ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ ᎠᏂᏫᏒᏍᎩ). With the knowledge we have gained and the opportunities provided by our unification we have also started five new language programs in the last year and have increased the quality, efficacy, and efficiency of three older language programs.