Cultural Survival will attend the grand opening of the Eastern Band of Cherokee's language immersion school, New Kituwah Academy, on October 7 near Cherokee, North Carolina. New Kituwah Academy will house Cherokee language preschool and kindergarten classrooms, serving 2 - 5 year olds. The students, who already speak English as their first language, will study English as a discrete subject area, but will be taught all other curriculum content in Cherokee. Eastern Cherokee is an endangered language, with 300 remaining speakers, most over age 50. The Eastern Band joins the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and a handful of other tribes around the country, in taking a multipronged, multimillion dollar approach to combat language endangerment through the establishment of dedicated immersion classrooms aimed at producing fully bilingual students. Cultural Survival will also meet with other language programs at Eastern Cherokee, including an immersion program at the Museum of the Cherokee, and the Cherokee youth radio project. Watch for coverage in upcoming e-newsletters, the CSQ and at cs.org.
