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Cherokee Immersion School Collection

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Languages Represented: Cherokee

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Acquisition Information:

Access Restrictions: The materials are open for research. Contact the NALC at (405) 325-3332 or language.samnoblemuseum@ou.edu.

Cite As: [title], [catalog number], Cherokee Immersion School Collection, Sam Noble Museum Department of Native American Languages. 

Collection Scope and Contents:

The Cherokee Nation Immersion School, located in Tahlequah, Okla., is a language preservation program designed to revitalize the Cherokee language beginning with its children. The school’s curriculum specialist, Sherry Holcomb, works to develop Cherokee language instructional materials and contributed to the establishment of the Cherokee Immersion School Collection at the Sam Noble Museum in 2014.

The collection consists of 115 soft-bound books and 1 poster developed by the Cherokee preservation program. Every item in the collection is exclusively in the Cherokee language. Cherokee is a Southern Iroquoian language that is still spoken by the Cherokee people and uses a unique syllabary writing system that was first invented by Sequoyah in the early 19th century and adopted by the Cherokee Nation in 1825.

The colorful, fully illustrated books in this collection are intended for young readers, while the poster, which documents the revised Cherokee syllabary, is a useful tool for people of all ages.

The books in this collection feature word problems, myths and stories, games, history and language lessons. Topics covered are wide in range and include dinosaurs, animals, math, botany, the concept of time, the environment, the universe, the Cherokee syllabary and more.