By Barbara R. Duncan
John Standingdeer Jr., a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, has received a patent for his new and unique method for decoding the inherent patterns in the Cherokee language, making it simple and easy to learn this endangered language. The U.S. Patent Office issued Patent Number US 9,158,762 B2 on October 13, 2015 for a “new and useful invention” for the “Deconstruction and Construction of Polysynthetic Words for Translation Purposes.”