Journeying Into Cherokee: Help and Encouragement for Learning the Cherokee Language

There are fewer than 2000 native speakers of Cherokee left, and they will be gone within a generation or two. Many people want to help the language by learning Cherokee, but they may not know where to begin.

Journeying Into Cherokee was written to encourage people to study the language, while providing them with the tools to be successful.

Topics covered include the following: why learning Cherokee is important; how to overcome negative attitudes; how to begin; how to use the language in your everyday life from day one; strategies to ensure retention; pitfalls to avoid; understanding the difference between English and Cherokee; the challenge of translation; how to utilize resources; thinking in Cherokee, and more. Alternating chapters from native-speaker Ed Fields and second-language learner Mary Rae give readers a valuable dual perspective on these topics.

The last chapter is unique: a transcription of a short translation on which the authors collaborated. There is also a Frequently Asked Questions section and an extensive list of resources to help students on their journey into the language.

Ed Fields' and Mary Rae's chapters are, at times, deeply personal, with moments of humor as well as somber reflections, and are sure to engage the reader.

Journeying Into Cherokee shows that everyone who is motivated can learn Cherokee and enjoy the process.

Ed Fields is a native Cherokee speaker who has taught the Cherokee language for over 20 years. His online classes have reached students all over the United States as well as countries as far away as England, Serbia, Italy, Norway, China, France, New Zealand, Belgium and Germany. In 2010 he was named a Cherokee National Treasure for his contributions to the language. Ed has been interviewed by the Cherokee Phoenix and was also featured in an OsiyoTV segment, Shade Tree Stories. He is a member of the Cherokee Nation Medicine Keepers, a small group which works to preserve traditional knowledge of plants and medicine. In 2022 Ed was a guest speaker for UC Berkeley. He was also named as project leader of a new archive at Northeastern State University, The Ed Fields Digital Cherokee Archive. In addition, Ed received the 2022 Cherokee Phoenix's Seven Feathers Award for language.

Mary Rae was born in Washington D.C. and grew up in Virginia. She graduated cum laude from Boston University with a B.A. in Spanish Language and Literature. In 2014, she began taking Ed Fields' online classes and has been studying the language ever since. In 2018 she passed the Cherokee Nation's proficiency test and, in 2019, she received her teacher certification from the Cherokee Nation. Mary has created Cherokee language curriculum for DAILP, the "Digital Archive of Indigenous Language Persistence," and maintains a youtube channel, "Tsalagi Elohi Igvnadena," dedicated to songs sung in Cherokee.