Approved by Cherokee Tribe of Oklahoma, written by Cherokee linguist Durbin Feeling and Wm. Pulte of SMU, Dallas, TX. Over 355 pages of grammatical information with sample sentences plus a 1700 word glossary are contained in this 81/2 x11 book. A superior quality and beneficial tool for people to acquire a better knowledge of the Cherokee language. A "must-have" in every Cherokee library. Softcover. ~ Condition: NEW ~

Mr. Feeling is a speaker of Cherokee who has dedicated his life to the study and teaching of his language. There are native linguists in many tribes in the US but none has had the impact or sustained success that Mr. Feeling has achieved in his 30 year career. The former chief of the Cherokees Wilma Mankiller called him “a new Sequoia” comparing his contributions for the preservation of Cherokee to those of the famous inventor of the Cherokee writing system.

Mr. Feeling has indeed made significant contributions to our academic knowledge of Cherokee. His Cherokee-English Dictionary (edited by William Pulte) is a landmark achievement. Dr. Pam Munro (UCLA) said in her letter of support that despite the challenges of describing such a “difficult” language as Cherokee, this Feeling & Pulte dictionary “is exactly on target - clear, correct, and inspiring”. Dr. Marcia Haag (University of Oklahoma) described this work as “the core of our knowledge of the language”. Beyond this early work, Mr. Feeling has continued to publish articles on the academic linguistic description of Cherokee, including most significantly “A structured approach to the learning the basic inflections of the Cherokee verb” and with William Pulte “Cherokee: A tone language or a pitch accent language”.

However, it may be that Mr. Feeling’s greatest achievement in the preservation of the Cherokee language has been in his sustained activity as a Cherokee teacher. He has developed Cherokee language instruction programs at the University of Oklahoma, Rogers State University in Claremore, Oklahoma, the University of Tulsa, the University of California, Irvine, the adult education program of the city of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and for 10 years as the tribal linguist of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Over the years he has produced a slew of teaching materials culminating in his “method of teaching Cherokee literacy” called SEE-SAY-WRITE. He has even translated two books of poems into Cherokee. One striking fact in his career as a teacher of a popular “new-age” language is that he has never produced language materials for personal profit - his dictionary, grammar and pedagogical material, published by the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, benefit the Cherokee people financially as well as linguistically.

In addition to his work as a scholar and teacher, Mr. Feeling has an impressive record of service. He has served as a program consultant for language education programs for the eastern Cherokee in North Carolina, the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Norman, OK, and a program evaluator for the Mississippi Choctaw Bilingual Education program. Mr. Feeling has served on the board of directors of the Endangered Language Fund since its inception in 1995. Dr. Douglas Whalen, the president of the ELF, states in his letter of support that Mr. Feeling “has argued persuasively for some of the community-based submissions whose overall presentation was not as convincing as it might have been.” Mr. Dallas Proctor, Chief of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, states with characteristic understatement that Mr. Feeling “has always been an upstanding citizen, involved in some research, writing, and teaching of our Cherokee language.”