Growing up in a small North Carolina town as a young member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Gilliam Jackson — whose Cherokee name is Doyi — knew critical English words for any child like “ice cream” and “Cola-Cola.”
But because his first language was Cherokee, he had to learn English from teachers at Snowbird Day School.
“I vividly remember a time when the teacher said the time, ‘it's noon, it's noon,’” Doyi said. “And in Cherokee, potato is noon. So I kind of put two and two together and said, ‘Oh, it must be time to eat.’”
Snowbird Day School was a school operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It was not a boarding school because Doyi could go home after classes finished.
That’s one of the reasons Doyi expressed gratitude for his schooling experience, as well as the fact that the teachers in his school did not punish their students for speaking their Indigenous languages.
“The two teachers that we had did not follow the assimilation policies of most of the other day schools and boarding schools,” he said. “And I think that had a lot to do with our community having a greater percentage of current speakers even today.”
The Cherokee language has helped Doyi make sense of the world, and he hopes to pass on the knowledge that comes with learning a new language to his students.
This fall, he will teach his first language at Duke University, and his class will be Duke’s first Native American language class.
Doyi, who is now 73 years old, will teach a dialect he heard growing up in his community. He said the pronunciations from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians slightly differs from those of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.
The class this fall will be an entry-level Cherokee class, but he noted the school hopes to expand the Cherokee language program for students that want to continue learning.
In the past, Doyi has taught at Stanford University and the University of North Carolina at Ashville. There he taught some Cherokee citizens and students who belonged to a federally recognized tribe, but many of his students were not Native American.
But that did not matter to Doyi.
“As you know, and sooner or later, I'm not going to be around, and so it's going to be upon people who have an interest … that teaches,” Doyi said.
For now, Doyi will continue teaching the next generation mostly online and looks forward to a class field trip he has planned, where students will travel to his community in Robbinsville, North Carolina.
This report was produced by the Oklahoma Public Media Exchange, a collaboration of public media organizations. Help support collaborative journalism by donating at the link at the top of this webpage.
