Cherokee Adult Choir Learns To Sing In Native Language

A small group of adults in Tulsa are learning to sing in Cherokee, as they revive the language some spoke and sang in childhood.

It’s part of a larger effort by the Cherokee Nation to preserve and expand use of native language, through any means available.

The Cherokee lyrics come easily for Mary Kay Henderson, who directs the Cherokee National Youth Choir and is teaching a class at Tulsa First Baptist Church. But the adults she’s teaching can’t speak or sing with fluency – yet.

They’re all Cherokee, except for one member, and all have a background in the language from long ago.

"When I was younger, my mother's sister and I sang Cherokee. She taught us Cherokee songs, but I had forgotten them,” said Gwen Henry.

Kim Smith said her parents often sang in Cherokee. “It skipped a generation with me, but I'm trying to learn some of the old songs I heard growing up,” she said.

Henderson said the class is just for fun, not to develop performers, and “to develop community and to get to know the language.”

There's a Cherokee version of most familiar Christian songs and Amazing Grace, in Cherokee, is a celebrated staple of their songbook.