Welcome to the 2025 Language Fair!
The theme for 2025 is “Languages all Around Us“.
View our 2025 Winners Lists: Pre K-5th grade | 6th-12th grade
You can view the poster art, comics and cartoon and video winners from the 2025 Fair here.
How to browse our YouTube channel:
At the top of the “Home” page, you will see the introductory video to the 2025 fair. It includes a welcome by our director Raina Heaton.
Below the introductory video, you can browse all of the fair submissions. They are grouped together by category. From there, each category is organized as a playlist, labeled by age group and category. Posters and comics have been put into slideshows by age group.
Clicking on any of the playlists on the main page will automatically play through all of the entries in that category. To go back to the list of playlists, click the back button, an arrow pointing to the left, on the upper righthand corner of your window. If you are watching the video on a mobile device, you can exit the video by swiping down with your finger, and then tap the back button on the upper righthand corner of your screen. The winners of each category have a ribbon decal on the video and are also listed in the title of each video.
If you’d like to search for a particular performance, you can use the search box (indicated by a magnifying glass and the word “Search” at the top, to the right of “About”) to search for any performance by title. If you are looking for a particular comic or poster, you’ll need to navigate to the video for either Comics & Cartoons or Posters for the right age group, and then skip through the video until you find the poster/comic you are looking for.
Please feel free to leave messages of encouragement to the young people in the comments section of the videos!
The ONAYLF staff would like to extend their gratitude to the fair’s participants, our judges and our sponsors!
2025 Fair Guest Speakers:
Henrietta Mann
Dr. 
Henrietta Mann is a full-blood Cheyenne enrolled with the Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, and is the Endowed Chair in Native American Studies at Montana State University, Bozeman. She taught at the University of Montana, Missoula for twenty-eight years where she was a Professor of Native American Studies. She also has taught at the University of California, Berkeley; Harvard University; and Haskell Indian Nations University located in Lawrence, Kansas.
Dr. Mann has served as the Director of the Office of Indian Education Programs and Deputy to the Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. She also was the National Coordinator of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act Coalition for the Association of American Indian Affairs.
In 1991, Rolling Stone Magazine named her one of the ten leading professors in the nation. She has been an interviewee and consultant for several television and movie productions and has lectured throughout the United States and in Mexico, Canada, Germany, Italy, and New Zealand.
Ryan Mackey
ᏩᏕ ᎦᎵᏍᎨᏫ (Wahde Galisgewi) or Ryan Mackey is a Cherokee Citizen and graduate of the University of Oklahoma’s Native American Studies Program. His emphasis was in Law, Policy, and Education. He completed his Masters degree in education TESOL Curriculum and Instruction, focusing on second language acquisition from the University of Kansas last spring. He is currently a candidate in the doctoral program for the Hawaiian and Indigenous Language and Culture Revitalization program, at the University of Hawaii, Hilo. Wahde has worked for the Cherokee Nation (CN) for seventeen years. Currently he is the Manager of the ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ ᏧᎾᏓᏂᎳᎨᎢ (tsalagi gawonihisdi tsundanilage’i) Cherokee Language Master Apprentice Program (CLMAP) and acts as facilitator, administrator, learner, and teacher. CLMAP creates conversationally proficient Cherokee language teachers to teach Cherokee using language immersion methods. He has worked closely with Native Cherokee speakers and other tribal language programs to help develop CLMAP and strategies to lead other language revitalization efforts.
Special Guest: Jerod Tate – April 8
Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate (Chickasaw) is a dedicated American Indian classical composer and pianist who expresses his native culture in symphonic music, ballet and opera. All of his compositions have been commissioned by major North American orchestras, ensembles and organizations and his works are performed throughout the world.
He is dedicated to the development of American Indian classical composition. He is a 2022 Chickasaw Hall of Fame inductee and a 2022 Distinguished Alumni Award recipient from The Cleveland Institute of Music. In 2021, he was appointed a Cultural Ambassador for the U. S. Department of State. Among many recent premieres, Tate’s highlights include commissions from the New York Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, Cantori NY and Turtle Island Quartet.
Tate is a three-time commissioned recipient from the American Composers Forum, a Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program recipient, a Cleveland Institute of Music Alumni Achievement Award recipient, a governor-appointed Creativity Ambassador for the State of Oklahoma and an Emmy Award-winner for his work on the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority documentary The Science of Composing. His music was also featured in the HBO series Westworld.
Tate earned his Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from Northwestern University and his Master of Music in Piano Performance and Composition from The Cleveland Institute of Music. His middle name, Impichchaachaaha’, means “their high corncrib” and is his inherited traditional Chickasaw house name.
Join Jerod Tate for a multimedia presentation where he will talk about his use of Chickasaw language in his compositions.