In the United States, the language of the Cherokee Indians, collateral victim of the pandemic

The Cherokee Nation, United States, has 385,000 members, mostly clustered in Oklahoma, since they were driven out by settlers from the East Coast. Among them, only two thousand people speak or grew up with the ancestral language, Cherokee. And of this handful of individuals, at least thirty have died from Covid-19.

Interviewed by France Info, Chuck Hoskin Jr, head of the nation, explains wanting to fill this gap. He himself does not speak the old dialect. He had also launched, before the pandemic, several programs to revive this language practice: “All of our programs were underway when the Covid hit, further threatening a language already on the verge of extinction. It’s a race against time. When these speakers age and die, we lose precious people. So we create opportunities to speak Cherokee because if a language isn’t useful, it’s hard to save it. ”

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Vaccinate to save this linguistic heritage

Of these two thousand speakers, the average age is around 67 years. A prime target for the disease. This is why priority vaccination was given to the elderly, but also to health personnel. As a result, half of them are now vaccinated and the Cherokees skeptical about the treatment have been reassured. We must not forget that, like African Americans, Native Americans have suffered severe persecution from federal authorities, including the medical profession.

“Their children, their grandchildren or themselves shared the story of their vaccination, explains Chief Hoskin. And the best spokesperson for the vaccine is not me, the Chief of the Cherokee Nation, but all these elders and speakers who are revered by our community. We will use this enthusiasm, this optimism, this confidence to vaccinate as many people as possible.. In the end, we will have a huge debt to these former Cherokees who took the first step, who got vaccinated and who showed us all that it was the right thing to do. “

Having had to close its casinos, the main source of income, a little less than a year ago because of the pandemic, the Cherokee nation has chosen to redistribute the food of these establishments to the elderly. Signing there the biggest food aid plan that this people have ever known. As the food was distributed by young translators, they were also able to explain to the elders, in the Cherokee language, the gestures and reflexes to adopt in the face of the Covid.

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