On this episode spend time with Betty Kirk, a quilter who always finds an opportunity to share the Cherokee language, hum a few tunes on the porch with Cherokee songbird Monica Taylor and learn about the sustaining tradition between the Cherokee people and strawberries.
She’s known for her quilts with unique embroidery and Indian girl figures. But Betty Kirk reaches many people, from grandchildren to coworkers, not only through her craft but also through teaching the Cherokee language.
She’s one third of the Western Swing band, the Cherokee Maidens, and a singer-songwriter who’s been playing music for twenty-five years. Monica Taylor draws influence from her upbringing singing southern gospel in church and from the Red Dirt music of her college years in Stillwater, Oklahoma, but she’s developed a sound all her own.
Dylan Collyge is a young Cherokee farmer, who came into the profession on his own following high school. He finds value in connecting with nature, dealing with new challenges every day, and carrying on a tradition of strawberry farming in his community in Adair County, Oklahoma.
Learn about the significance of strawberries to Cherokee people, and how they’re celebrated every year in the Cherokee Nation.
Cherokee elder and speaker Lawrence Panther gets back to basics teaching the Cherokee syllabary with help from Cherokee Immersion Charter School students. In this lesson, they share pronunciation of several Cherokee consonant sounds and words created from them, including “mushroom” and “hawk.”
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