The Muscogee Nation is sounding the alarm over the need to revitalize two Indigenous languages. Principal Chief David Hill recently issued an executive order outlining actions to safeguard the Muscogee and Euchee languages.
The Muscogee Nation lost about 200 fluent speakers and knowledge keepers during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Hill.
"And that's one of the things my grandmother told me is, 'Once you lose the language, your culture and your history,' she said, 'you no longer exist,'" Hill said.
A 2024 study estimated fewer than 300 first-language Muscogee speakers remain, most of whom are over 60 years old. Both the Muscogee and Euchee languages are critically endangered, as stated in the proclamation, and "hold deep spiritual and cultural significance, carrying knowledge, stories and traditions" that inform Muscogee identity.
Currently, the Muscogee Nation has a liaison department that organizes gatherings for fluent language speakers to preserve knowledge. But, Hill said, this executive order takes it a step further by establishing a language revitalization task force and securing funding to support early childhood language immersion programs.
It also aims to integrate the language into tribal operations and services by training employees to utilize Muscogee and Euchee greetings during in-person and over-the-phone interactions. The order also notes incentives for learning and using the languages in their daily work.
The proclamation is symbolic, too.
"I think it was the president had done one, saying 'English is the number one language in the United States,'" Hill said. "Well, not to us. Our first language is Muscogee."
Euchee, also spelled Yuchi, is a linguistic isolate, meaning it has no known genetic relationship to another language.
Dr. Richard Grounds, whose Yuchi name is shUpa, created the nation's writing system about 30 years ago. Now he works as the executive director of the Yuchi Language Project, an organization currently revitalizing the language and working to create a sustainable language community through an immersion school and other community programs.
"Our languages are critical to our life in the churches, in our ceremonies, and everything that we do," Grounds, who is a Muscogee citizen, said. "And to have this sitting principal chief of the Muscogee Creek Nation, just spell it out. …it's absolutely critical to the forward progress of the nation and of our languages."
During the allotment era, the Yuchi were listed as "Creek" on the Dawes Rolls — and have since insisted they are separate from the Muscogees. But they were denied federal recognition in 2000 and are the only one out of the 39 tribes in Oklahoma not to be federally recognized. There are more than 2,000 Yuchi people, and many are enrolled citizens of the Muscogee Nation, according to the Yuchi Language Project.
"We, at this point, are primarily working with second-language fluent learners," Grounds said. "So we're up around 50 folks who are at different levels of fluency."
Grounds said about 30 students are enrolled in the Yuchi Language Immersion School near Tulsa, and there are approximately 25 students at the Kellyville Yuchi afterschool program.
"We're teaching our kids to be able to literally say that 'We are still here,'" Grounds said. "But to say it in our language, just as our founding elder was making those words in our language back to the Creator."
Hill noted the importance of the Muscogee language and that he's protective of it, especially now that it's becoming more accessible.
Toward the end of the executive order is an action item to develop a law to safeguard the intellectual property of their languages — a move to ensure that what happened with the Standing Rock Sioux, when a white man copyrighted Lakota language materials after working with elders, does not happen to the Muscogee.
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.
