The situation of the Cheroki language is so complicated in the Txeroki Nation of Oklahoma (EE.UU.) Only 2,000 people are able to speak alone. In addition, the usual difficulties to sustain it have been added to the incidence of coronavirus in the last year. About 30 people who speak the Txeroki language have died from the disease, and in order to prevent the number from increasing, the community has made a decision:People who have Cherokee "as the first language" will have preference in vaccination, along with the elderly and health workers.

Chuck Hoskin, director of Txeroki Nación, explains to CNN the reasons: “When you lose a speaker and you’re a tribe that only has 2,000 speakers who speak easily, you lose nothing that cannot be replaced; as in this life, you lose a national treasure.” They think that if they "survive" the COVID-19 pandemic and transmit "their wisdom", they can help ensure the survival of the Txeroki language.

About 141,000 Cherokes live in the northeastern Oklahoma State Reserve. There, about 12,300 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed, resulting in the deaths of more than 60 people. Among the deaths, about thirty elderly people using Cheresque language have been cited in the Basque Country.

The tribe received the first vaccines from the company Pfizer in mid-December, and launched them in a way inmediata.Entre other things, such as in the Basque Country, a process has been developed in several phases, as explained on the Txeroki Nation Health Service website. Thus, ‘frontline health workers’ and ‘older people’ have a preference for vaccination. Together with them they have included those who have the ‘first language cheroki’. Thus, in addition to protecting the "health services and the most vulnerable Cherokee population", they have also chosen to preserve the "culture". So far, some 600 people who speak the Txeroki language have been vaccinated, and it is expected that by the end of the week they will reach 1,000 people.

‘Endangered’

Txeroki is ‘in serious danger of losing’ the tongue. This was explained by the linguist Misha Becker to Berria in an interview he did a couple of years ago. In this regard, he indicated that he will now have a maximum of 10,000 speakers: “According to the latest data, there are between one thousand and ten thousand speakers. The differences are so wide, as the citizens who know the loose words are considered as speakers, but few are able to maintain a full dialogue with the Cherokis’. Most of them live in Oklahoma, in the Txeroki Nation.