Podcast Episode 2 - Emily Boggs

This is a podcast episode about the Cherokee language revitalization movement. The host interviews Dr. Sarah Snyder Hopkins, who is an ethnomusicologist and language anthropologist. Dr. Hopkins talks about her background and how she got involved in Cherokee language revitalization. They discuss the challenges of creating resources for Cherokee language education and the importance of keeping students engaged and practicing the language. The lack of fluent speakers and teachers is identified as a major challenge facing the Cherokee language revitalization movement. of my podcast for Dr. Groding's honors rhetoric class about the Cherokee language revitalization movement. In our last episode, we discussed the history of the Cherokee Nation and the Cherokee language syllabary. This episode, we are going more into the modern-day history of the Cherokee Nation, and I will be interviewing Dr. Sarah Snyder Hopkins of Western Carolina University, who is an ethnomusicologist and a language anthropologist and a professor of the Cherokee language down there. She also teaches the Cherokee choir. So, let's get into the interview. First off, can you just describe your career to me and your background and how you got into it? Sure. Well, my name is Sarah Snyder Hopkins, and I am not Native, and I'm not Cherokee. I grew up near Winstonstown, North Carolina, in Stokes County, a rural county. My family has been there, settled there. There are a few descendants settled there for many, many, many years, like hundreds of years in that region. And I got involved, actually, through really my graduate work is when I became involved in Native stuff, in Cherokee language specifically. Essentially, in graduate school, my background is in music. I was a double major in music and English literature. I went to grad school for ethnomusicology, but I was doing all this linguistic work, too, there, and I became interested in looking at how music can be used in language revitalization contexts. And so, then I became... When you're doing work like I was doing, if you're doing ethnographic research, you have to work with a community and observe cultural features. And so, when I was looking for a case study for how I could look at music and language revitalization, it sort of struck me. It's like, oh, well, I'm from North Carolina, and I knew that there was a Cherokee language here and so I said, well, let me see what's happening in Cherokee. So, I came here for a summer and took a Cherokee language class, actually, here at Western, where I work now, and met a bunch of wonderful people, many of whom are still dear friends to me and colleagues. And I ended up collaborating with a Cherokee speaker named Nanny Taylor, writing some kids' songs in the language and covering some pop songs and stuff like that, translating with her. And so, then when it came time for me to actually do my dissertation work, I approached the managers at the Language Academy and said, hey, I'd like to observe your program for looking at how music is used in language revitalization. And they were basically like, oh, well, okay, good, you're hired. And I said, oh, okay, so it wasn't me watching how other people were doing that, but now I was the person responsible for music education at the Language Immersion School. So, I was sort of filling in a need, in a way. The musical training kind of helped me step into that role, and I became the music and arts teacher for the Cherokee Language School for six years before I came here to Western and finally finished up my dissertation and was hired here at Western. Yeah, so that sort of, you know, definitely changed the nature of my life and my work. You are now the person that is going to figure this out and do this work that you supposedly wanted to observe, that, oh, this is the work we need. So, that's sort of how I got into it, and I've been here ever since I moved down in 2010 to do my dissertation field work, and I have never left. Wow, that's really amazing to hear. When I was doing my research for this project, I came across a study that was sort of talking about how the Cherokee Nation, Oklahoma specifically, was trying to get more teachers, but how that sort of, because of all the barriers there with them not having access to premium material, how they sort of had to create their own material. So, it's really inspiring to hear that you sort of stepped in that role yourself there for the music education. Absolutely. I mean, it's the same thing here. And, of course, a lot of, I mean, we got a lot of things from the Oklahoma Immersion School that, you know, we adapted to the dialect or just took whole tones and just, you know, taught it in the dialect it was in. Or, you know, I taught music. I taught some of the songs that they used out there to my students. But, oh, yeah, it's definitely the lack of, you know, pre-made resources. You know, teachers have hard enough jobs as it is, right? So, you throw on top of that, you're also supposed to be learning and teaching in a second language, and you have to make most of your own material, you know, or have to adapt things. You can't just grab a ready-made lesson plan off of the shelf and go with it. Like, you know, this ready-made lesson plan is in English, and so now you have to plan enough ahead of time to, you know, translate parts of it into Cherokee. And if it needs resources, you've got to be able to have enough time to take out the English and put in the Cherokee. And, yeah, it's super intensive and not for the faint of heart. I think you have to really buy in and believe in the mission. And even if you do, people get burned out doing it because it is a huge undertaking. Sorry, so you really have to be a real innovator with this project. That is one of the things that's really inspired me recently, just following Cherokee Nation online and then also Cherokee TV on their Instagram page and seeing all the new, like, videos and stories that they're, like, putting out in Cherokee today. I think it's sort of having those resources that they're putting out definitely is great for future generations. Absolutely. Definitely. They're doing pretty well. Cherokee Nation is having some success with their adult immersion programs in particular. I think the challenges they face with their youth immersion, you know, their elementary schools, similar to the problems that folks have here in that there's not a place for those students to go past sixth grade. And so they go through the programs up through sixth grade and then they go to the regular school systems and they're not necessarily getting to use their language and, you know, they will lose a lot of it. So there's sort of a gap of time between that and then when they could be in an adult immersion program. I don't know if Cherokee Nation is addressing that. They probably are in some way, but here it's not being addressed. I think we still have this big gap. Students go to seventh grade and that's it. And then we've had our first group, the first graduating class from the Language Academy, and I think two or three of those students are now, like, back teaching and working with a language immersion program, but they just spent six years out of the language. So it's not, you know, there's a gap and that's hard to address because there's not enough speakers and teachers to hardly keep going what's currently going. That actually brings me to one of my questions that I had written down. As a Cherokee language educator, do you think there's any, like, way for people within that gap that you discussed to really keep, like, pursuing Cherokee language education? Like, are there any, like, resources for them to go to? You mean the students? Mm-hmm. I mean, one of the things that they wanted to do was to get them together every so often, but the problem here is that the classes that graduate are pretty small. I mean, it's like a handful of students. It might be, like, six or seven sometimes. And they go to any of three different high schools in the area. So they might go to Cherokee Central High School, or they might go to, like, Swain County High School, and some might go to Smoky Mountain High School. And then you've got students over in the county, another county over there, Graham County, then they go to Robinsville High School. So these students are scattering to different places. So, you know, what you need to do is you almost have it where they get together, even after they leave the academy, and they're together for, you know, a class period, a day, or, you know, as often as they can get together to just keep their language and practice and have, you know. But that really hasn't been feasible given the geographic constraints and, you know, other classes they have to take, you know, for their education. It's a big challenge. And the only way that they can keep it when they learn and use it is to use it and to get together with other speakers and use their language skills. So unless, you know, you're talking about 12-year-olds, you know, they're wanting to go play sports and hang out with their friends. So that's a really hard...it's really hard. You know, the only other option is to, in some way, try to keep them, you know, keep the school going longer. And that doesn't work in terms of resources either with teachers. There are Cherokee language classes taught at the Cherokee Central schools and middle schools. But they, you know, they're very basic to start with. So the students that came out of the immersion school would be bored. So there's a gap. And right now there's not a great way to address the gap. I think a conundrum that hasn't been solved. One of the big things I sort of want to address is just any, like, current challenges that Cherokee speakers or educators see that the Cherokee language revitalization movement is facing. I mean, the biggest... The speakers is honestly the biggest thing. I mean, the teachers. Like, not having teachers and not even... Obviously, we're losing speakers, right? That's the problem. We're not... We're losing fluent speakers and they're all now pretty elderly, almost all of them. And they... So they're not necessarily in the classroom. And then the programs in place haven't produced enough strong second language learners to come back as teachers. And even if you are a strong second language learner, that doesn't make you a great teacher either. You know, teaching is its own skill. And language speaking and learning languages can be their own skill. They don't necessarily coincide. Kind of like being good at music and language, you know. They don't necessarily coincide. So finding people that can fill kind of a niche, you know. So this is actually a big concern because, like, projected that for the next 10 years there's going to be a major deficit of qualified teachers to continue these Cherokee language programs. So the Cherokee Preservation Foundation, which is a regional granting organization, a non-profit that gives out... Gosh, I think last year they... Last grant cycle they gave out more than $100 million in grants to the region. That funding is basically the state cut of the casino revenues. So those... That funding now is partially going to be directed at incentivizing adult learners to become teachers. And it's recognized as an issue that, you know, this is coming. We need more teachers. How is it going to happen? But, you know, it's also a problem beyond the language context too, right? It's beyond... Teachers in general, we need teachers, right? But there's still that gap that you described with people being good language learners but not necessarily good teachers or not having that skill. Yeah, or vice versa. True. And how many... Like I said, teaching is already hard enough and taking on doing it in a second language with less materials, you know, little materials. In terms of your success story, what has really been effective for you in becoming a teacher of the surrogate language and also learning the culture behind it? I mean, my position and where I am was as much about being in the right place at the right time as it was about, you know, anything else. Thinking about that, I think that this position became available and I happened to be, you know, fit the requirements and expectations of the job. Ideally, the person in my job would be a person that's an enrolled member of the Eastern Band. There aren't that many folks. I mean, the chart's not huge to start with. There's like, I think, 17,000 members but, you know, of that, how many are going to have a PhD? And then a PhD where they've done surrogate language, I know one. His name is Dr. Ben Fry and right now he teaches surrogate language at UNC Chapel Hill. He's a good colleague of mine. He's actually coming here today to give a talk. And then he has accepted a position at UNC Asheville. He's going to be going there, which is about an hour, hour and 15 minutes from the reservation, the Squaw Boundary. So, he's the qualified person to do that, but he had a job elsewhere and he's not coming to Western. So, partly I was just sort of... I just sort of fit this very niche thing. But also, I was also perhaps more... I invested possibly more deeply into building my ties with the community and contributing to language revitalization than into building my career in a way that I didn't just go for a year and do that and then leave, but that I stayed. And even to my own, at times, financial detriment because I was working as a contractor. I wasn't making a ton of money and it was a struggle at times. So, in some ways, maybe it's just like my being here is more a sign of my persistence and not leaving than anything else. But it's not work that you can just come in and do. If you take the time to learn a language and you realize that there aren't many people that are learning that language, you realize that it's not something you just walk away from. If you learn Spanish, it's like, oh, whatever. There's millions and millions of Spanish speakers and no one cares if I'm now bored with Spanish. You know what I mean? It doesn't work that way because there's very few people that speak Cherokee. So, you have this kind of buy-in to it and connection to the few people that speak the language because you're part of that community. You might not... I'm not a tribal member, but I'm part of this language community and you just don't just walk away from that because people invest in you. They've invested in me, like letting me be here and directing resources to me for my own learning, for me learning that language, even while I was working for them. So, it's a different kind of work than necessarily other kinds of academic positions, if that makes sense. You're holding something so precious to the entire culture and community there. As I can't respond to this, one of my own personal interests has been studying some of the last stories of languages that have died out, like Dalmatian, for example, or a lot of the Siberian Indigenous stories. A lot of them were last captured by English speakers, so they don't hold the same complexity as they once did, but it's just... It's interesting to think about. Cherokee is in some ways better off than other languages. It's very heavily documented. It's recorded and it's going to make it possible for people to continue to learn it in some capacity. It's not going to be the same as when they were learning it in the home from mom and dad and their parents. It's not going to be spoken in the same context. It's a very political kind of thing to try to push it into spaces. My colleague who's coming today is very adamant that, no, push Cherokee into other spaces that it's not necessarily found now. Have people ordering at the coffee shop in Cherokee language and incentivize them to do so, they get a discount every year. Getting them to do all these things in Cherokee to push Cherokee out into spaces where it doesn't typically get used and that's an uphill battle. It's hard. It's hard work and it's subversive and, you know, but that's important, too, in terms of keeping it as an everyday language, spoken language. But even where it's not, the fact that it does have all this documentation helps. But, you know, but that's... At that point, you know, when the last kind of first language speaker is gone, like, I mean, their versions of the language are gone. You know, the existing variations of the language are gone. Like, we still, even to this day, I documented a lady that's working here with my classes and the way that she did this particular grammatical construction was different than I've ever seen anyone else do it. And I had her... I had, like, three different examples of her doing it that way. I was like, what in the world is this? I've never seen it done this way. So, it's variations. And so, those things, you know, the structure of the language is known and understood, but unless you can capture the mind and speech of every single speaker, you're losing those variations as you lose it. So, you know, if people learn it as a second language, that can take on a life of its own too, that people are using it in different ways. It has its own thing. But it's not going to be the same. Yeah, you lose the knowledge of the older generations that came before. And I've heard about the Indigenous Hawaiian languages. A lot of how they've... And as a very successful movement for Indigenous language revitalization, they've used online spaces to really preserve it and educate it across the islands. But in doing so, it definitely has changed with the different slangs sort of getting changed over time. And that's really beautiful to see, that you definitely lose sort of some of the older complexities of it and the variations. It makes me think of like, everyone thought we would be living in this meta world, right? You know, virtual worlds where we would be interacting with our headsets and like, you know, we should be in there using Cherokee languages or whatever, you know, endangered language interacting in virtual spaces. I mean, right? But it just hasn't happened. But certainly, I mean, technology is great. It helps. It's a tool. But all the language learning... Language learning always comes because people have relationships with each other. So, you can't... You know, I can listen to recordings of Cherokee and I can get better, but in terms of actually speaking it, I have to speak with other people to be able to do it in context like that. So, you know, we can't substitute... I mean, I guess they have things... Duolingo has, you know, AIs or you can learn Spanish or whatever and talk to the computer. But, I mean, really, it's generating the existing language when you do that. It's not the same as talking to a real person. And so, we should never think that technology will... You know, the technology that works for preserving languages just means that it allows people to build those relationships with each other to keep it going. They don't... Technology doesn't substitute for those things. I absolutely agree with that. Without the real relationship between a teacher and a student, then the language just sort of might as well die at that point. It just doesn't hold the same lineage. There's plenty of languages that are sort of more academic languages. There's Latin, you know, Esperanto, or even languages that aren't spoken anymore but still read. I mean, Hebrew was. It's actually one of the biggest case studies of a language that was mostly, you know, only liturgical, not a language of general speech. That was turned into a language of communication again. Probably the only case study of that, actually. But, you know, not to bring up this because it's in the news, but that was part of establishing an entire state with the whole state apparatus behind it. I don't want to hold you for too long, but can I just ask you a few questions about specifically your career in music? Before we leave? Sure, no problem. Okay. At the beginning of our interview, you mentioned the Cherokee Choir. Mm-hmm. How do you think preservation of Cherokee musical tradition sort of helps preserve the language and the culture as well? Yeah, right, that's the question. So, I think the answer to that, well, there's probably many answers to that, but I will say this, that it's not that music, and maybe this is me answering that question in my dissertation too, right? It's not that the music is not helping in language revitalization, but that practice is language. That we oftentimes think about language preservation as, like, are people sitting down and having a conversation with each other face-to-face? Mm-hmm. But that's only one way that people use language, is in this conversational way of, you know, narrating or, you know, asking for something and getting what they need. It's sort of one, you know, face-to-face or a group of people conversing, you know, a conversation. We use language in many different ways, and music is one of the other ways that we use language. And in fact, it's one of the ways that languages persist. I mean, thinking about, I mentioned Latin, you know, Latin persisted much longer in songs than it did as a spoken language. So, music is, it is language. The song is language use. It's not, you know, perpetuating or aiding in language use. I mean, it is. It is another domain where language is used. What makes it particularly great is that someone can sing and be using their language without the pressure of being conversational, because being able to hold a conversation in a language is kind of, that's the benchmark. I mean, that's like, you know, you're arriving at fluency. You know, to have a full-on fluent conversation in the language is, you know, that's the tallest order for language preservation and learning. That's hard to achieve, particularly when you have an endangered language and you don't have a lot of people giving you the opportunity to practice. So, singing, it is language use. It's just a different domain of language use. And the practice, the hymn singing practice that we've been working with in our choir is longstanding. I mean, it's more than 200 years old. It's a Christian practice, but it's considered a traditional practice. It's also going endangered along with the language. Hymn singing in general is actually an endangered practice, particularly within churches and stuff. So, we are kind of revitalizing it a bit as a community practice, because it was. People got together. They used to have, actually, even at the Cherokee Fair every year, they would have these singing competitions. And people would get together, and the different groups would perform. And maybe not competitions. Sometimes they were competing, gospel singing competitions, but these groups would perform. And they would be singing Cherokee language hymns, and then later they were singing gospel songs. And it is a public thing. And people would get together and have gospel singing and hymn singing. So, it's a communal thing. It's not just a church service thing. So, we, you know, our choir is intended to, we're not just trying to sustain Cherokee language, but the whole practice of singing in that tradition. It's both. It's for the, you know, on behalf of the Cherokee language community. But does that answer your question? Oh, no, absolutely. I just love it. I love to hear that. I'm a member of the Indianapolis Children's Choir, or I was until I graduated last year. But we had a lot of great opportunities, especially my last year, to practice hymn singing. And we actually sang for Evensong in the Church of Canterbury in England. Right. Yeah, it was a really amazing opportunity because I haven't, I'm a Presbyterian in practice. So, we don't really, we don't really do hymns. A lot of Protestant churches don't, like you mentioned. But it definitely, you lose that whole community. Congregational singing is not the, you know, it's definitely at a low point right now in our society in general. Singing and music, music making and singing has sort of become like, oh, it's a specialist thing. And it's sad because it used to be that everybody would participate, you know. So, we certainly want to bring that to it. We take everybody. Like, we have plenty of people in my choir that can't hold a tune, and that's fine. We don't care. The point is not to be... We are much more interested in preserving the practice of it than we are in, you know, some perfect performance product for it to go out and, you know, tokenize. It's not about that. I love hearing that so much because I hear so many people with almost a hatred for their own voice. And my choir always advocated for the fact that anybody can really sing if you are taught and if you have a passion for it. So, I love to hear that you are promoting that and that your choir is promoting that. It's really inspirational. Well, yeah. I think that's one of the benefits of being an ethnomusicologist is that, you know, one of our famous texts that we read in ethnomusicology is How Musical is Man by John Blacking. And the premise of that book is that it's a universal human trait. Singing is one of the few things that's a universal human trait. It's everywhere across Earth, every culture that's ever been documented sings. It is something that we as human beings do to sort of make it seem like at some point we go from children who love to sing to being adults who are afraid to sing. And it's really, really unfortunate. And part of that is because there's just no opportunities for them to do that. You know, group singing is one of the few places where people, and many won't. And also turning choir singing into something like, oh, you have to be able to read music. And, you know, we're working with Shade Notes and we do have some music and stuff, but they don't necessarily have to be able to read to sing with us. So I think that's one of the things that music is universal in every way. And this concludes my conversation with Dr. Schneider-Hopkins. While the future of Indigenous languages has been bleak since European settlers first arrived in the Americas, it's individuals like her who are passionate about building a community through all parts of the culture. From spoken and written language to the music we express ourselves with, they give me hope for the Cherokee Language Revitalization Movement. By focusing on building community, we can focus on our responsibility to each other to keep our language and traditions alive for generations to come. I'd like to thank Dr. Schneider-Hopkins, Professor of Anthropophagy and Cherokee Language at Western Carolina University, for being on my podcast today. I'd also like to thank Ketsa and Sarah Barisa for the musical transitions. Wado, and have a good day.