By BROOKLYN BROWN
One Feather Reporter
CHEROKEE, N.C. – March is Women’s History Month. For the month of March, the One Feather will be sharing articles that highlight strong, intelligent women behind the day-to-day operations of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI).
This week’s article features anitsalagi anigeya (Cherokee women) from New Kituwah Academy (NKA), the early childhood to sixth grade Cherokee language immersion school.
Irene Smoker Jackson, Cherokee fluent speaker and NKA Cherokee language specialist for the third and fourth grade classrooms, travels hours to get to and from work each day, but she says the children make it all worth it. “It’s amazing to hear them speak and learn. It’s challenging at times, but to keep it up and keep it going, that’s what we’re all about—the Cherokee women that carry on the language and teach others, not only the kids but the coworkers and the community,” she shared.
: Pictured left to right back row – Tavish Lambert Brown, NKA early childhood supervisor; Zhana Michelle Long, NKA family partnership lead teacher; Madison Crowe Woodard, NKA physical education teacher; Joni Ledford, NKA fifth and sixth grade teacher’s assistant; Kelly Murphy, NKA kindergarten teacher’s assistant; Kaitlyn Roberts, NKA second grade teacher; front row – Losi Sneed, fluent speaker and NKA teacher in three- and four-year-old classrooms; Caroline Oocumma, NKA lead teacher in the three-year-old classroom; Irene Smoker Jackson, fluent speaker and language specialist for the third and fourth grade. (BROOKLYN BROWN/One Feather photo)
“Just coming to work every day and just to see the kids smiling and hearing them speak, that brings real great hope to me that this generation is going to carry it on. I don’t think the language is ever going to die, as some people would say it would. It’s a great pleasure to carry that on and we are determined to do that by coming here.”
Madison Crowe Woodard, NKA physical education teacher, said the traditional and historical values of Cherokee women are part of the foundation of the academy.
“Cherokee women are the cornerstone of why we even exist today. I feel like they were leading the pack back in the day and we’re leading the pack again in the present. As the school goes, we’re run by women— our supervisors, our managers, everyone from us up are women.”
Kelly Murphy, teacher’s assistant in the kindergarten classroom, added that the women around her at NKA motivate her. “Women are the backbone of our tribe. I look around and I see all these strong women just like Caroline [Oocumma], Losi [Sneed], our elders, Stacy [Wolfe] and Stacy [Rogers] that come here every day. There are days I’m like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to come today.’ Then you see them sitting here and that’s why you should be here.”
Caroline Oocumma is the lead teacher in the three-year-old classroom, and she is re-learning her language as she teaches. “Cherokee was my first language, but I forgot it. I’m trying to get it all back, and sometimes I don’t want to say it. I feel like I’m going to say it wrong, but I think about it at night, ‘I need to say this, I need to talk more,’ and when I’m lying in bed, I can talk to my mom. I can act like she’s answering me. Sometimes I can hear her saying it to me.”
Oocumma said Losi Sneed, Cherokee fluent speaker who teaches in the three- and four-year-old rooms, challenges her to continue speaking.
Woodard said she learns from the children how to be brave when learning the language.
“They have an innocence when learning the language. The kids aren’t afraid to mess up. Sometimes I think we have to, as second language learners, think of ourselves like that. Don’t be afraid to mess up. That’s how you learn how to get better and that’s something I take from them, not being afraid.”
Jackson shared that the strength of Cherokee women, especially when working with the Cherokee language, is generational. “It’s a generation that we had come from, from our mothers and grandmothers, and we tend to carry that on and want to carry that on. My mother is no longer with us, but I can carry on her tradition and what her language was. Even when I first came here, I was able to call her up, and a word that I couldn’t say or I couldn’t remember, I would just call her, and she would tell me over the phone. And now she’s no longer with me, but I can still hear her, and I am able to carry her and all her generations from where she came from.”
Joni Ledford, teacher’s assistant for fifth and sixth grade, reiterated that generational impact. “Women are the rock of the families. My great grandma was, my grandma was, my mom. That’s all I can remember are them just being the rock of the family. When you lose them, you lose a lot.”
Kaitlyn Roberts, second grade teacher, continues to learn how to be a Cherokee woman from the women she works with at NKA. “I feel like the women here who were raised in a more traditional way have been very open and generous in teaching me about a woman’s role in Cherokee society and what it means to be a Cherokee woman,” she said.
“I’ve learned how important women are in preserving and passing on our culture and also what our responsibilities are to our community, to each other and also especially to the kids.”
