Cultural Survival will attend the grand opening of the Eastern Band of Cherokee's language immersion school, New Kituwah Academy, on October 7 near Cherokee, North Carolina. New Kituwah Academy will house Cherokee language preschool and kindergarten classrooms, serving 2 - 5 year olds. The students, who already speak English as their first language, will study English as a discrete subject area, but will be taught all other curriculum content in Cherokee. Eastern Cherokee is an endangered language, with 300 remaining speakers, most over age 50.

The National Native Language Revitalization Summit that Cultural Survival co-organized this May was by almost any measure, a great success. Nearly 300 people from across Indian Country gathered for three days of eduction, advocacy, and celebration. Read more.

Cultural Survival and the National Alliance to Save Native Languages are facilitating the National Native Language Revitalization Summit in Washington D.C. this May 11th-13th. 

Working with top officials at the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), members of Congress, and leading Washington DC-based tribal advocacy groups, Cultural Survival's endangered language campaign director Ryan Wilson has been pushing for $5 million in federal funds for "shovel-ready" projects to support repairs and renovations at American Indian language immersion schools throughout the U.S. Watch for more news next week as the economic stimulus package moves through Congress to President Obama.

A recently released atlas displays the geographical regions of endangered languages, including the 2,500 languages (out of 6,000 languages worldwide) that UNESCO says are in danger of becoming extinct or have recently disappeared.

Read more about it here: