Cherokee Nation identified Cherokee speakers as among the first groups to be eligible for the shot
By Harmeet Kaur, CNN
Updated 2:53 PM ET, Tue January 12, 2021
Excerpts:
Only about 2,000 people can speak the Cherokee language fluently. And as Covid-19 began to spread, that number started to dwindle.
So when the Cherokee Nation began receiving shipments of the Covid-19 vaccine, the tribal government identified Cherokee speakers as among the first groups to be eligible for the shot.
"When you lose a speaker and you're a tribe that has only 2,000 fluent speakers left, you've lost something that isn't just irreplaceable, as all life is, but is really a national treasure," Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. told CNN. "Whether they survive and whether they pass down their knowledge will help determine in a couple of generations if there is a Cherokee language left."
Prioritizing the vaccination of Cherokee speakers and elders has also had an unintended consequence: It has built trust in the vaccine among other citizens of the tribe. Hoskin said he's seen some hesitation among Cherokee Nation citizens about taking the vaccine. But the tribe's decision to vaccinate native speakers early helped ease the anxieties that some people might have otherwise had, he added.
"People revere elders in the Cherokee Nation," he said. "I think when they saw that group of people being made a high priority and celebrating it, that surely has built some confidence."
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/12/us/cherokee-nation-language-speakers-vaccine-trnd/index.html
Tim King, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a fluent Cherokee language speaker, receives a Covid-19 vaccine in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.
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