Alexis Kim, Contributing Photographer

After debuting in fall 2023, the Cherokee language program at Yale is seeking to expand its course offerings. As the University’s first and only Indigenous language track for credit, the Cherokee program has seen consistent enrollment and will offer an L4 course for the first time in spring 2025.

At the same time, students have been unable to take other Indigenous language courses through the Native American Cultural Center’s non-credit language program, as it has been on pause during the fall 2024 semester due to funding issues.

“It’s important to have the opportunity to study Native American and Indigenous languages for many reasons,” professor Ned Blackhawk, who runs multiple Native American academic initiatives on campus, told the News. “Many are heavily endangered and are under threats of going dormant or becoming misused for generations to come.”

Funding issues pause non-credit Indigenous language program

Since 2015, the Yale Native American Language Program at the Native American Cultural Center has offered non-credit courses in Indigenous languages such as Diné, Hawaiian, Mohawk and Ojibwe. Before Cherokee language was formally offered as a course in Yale College, the language was also taught through the NACC’s program.

“That program essentially is volunteer and extracurricular, which means the language learning that happens in that space is not rooted in academic evaluation or course credit obtainment,” Blackhawk, of the Western Shoshone, said. 

According to the NACC’s website, while the program was in session, classes for the program met twice a week over video chat and were taught by instructors from outside of Yale. At the program’s peak, there were around six or seven different Indigenous language courses taught concurrently, per Blackhawk. 

Blackhawk said that the program, which takes the format of community classes, prioritizes “building long-term relationships” with instructors from Native American communities.

“It wouldn’t be healthy in the long-term sense to have language instructors only working with us, say, for 13 weeks or in a very short-term capacity,” Blackhawk said. “What we’re trying to do is build long term relationships so that students in particular can come back to their instructors on a continual basis.”

Blackhawk also stated that because many Indigenous languages are not codified around “conventional academic parameters,” the non-credit program confers flexibility and “a deep commitment and an abiding concern to offer language use in whatever ways that can be done.”

For the fall 2024 semester, the program has been on pause due to funding, according to Matthew Makomenaw, director of the NACC. Makomenaw did not specify which office at Yale was responsible for funding the Native American Language Program but said that Blackhawk, who is now on sabbatical, has been involved in the funding process.

According to Blackhawk, the program was historically funded at a “relatively small amount of consistent funding.”

In the meantime, students may still have the opportunity to learn Indigenous languages outside of the NACC. Makomenaw pointed to the Directed Independent Language Study — or DILS — program, which matches students to fluent language partners and does not offer course credit. Students are still able to request Indigenous language instruction through DILS while the NACC program is on hold.

Cherokee program expands to higher course levels

In April 2023, Yale College announced its Cherokee language course offering, the first of its kind in the University’s history. Since its debut in fall 2023, the program has grown to offer four accredited courses, including “Intermediate Cherokee II,” or Cherokee 140, for the first time in Spring 2025.

Keenan Walker ’27 enrolled in the inaugural semester of Cherokee language in the first semester of his first year, hoping to learn more about a community largely based in his native Oklahoma. By the end of the semester, he had written a three-page letter of gratitude to his professor, Patrick Del Percio, and registered for the next level of the language.

Walker is among the six students who enrolled in the course when it was first offered. He has since progressed through three levels of the course, crediting Del Percio for cultivating a supportive classroom environment.

“It’s not necessarily the most transferable skill,” Walker explained. “To be in Cherokee means you’re there for a very specific reason. Oftentimes, I feel like it is about that community.”

In Cherokee 110, the introductory-level course, students learn foundational vocabulary and everyday phrases, as well as the basics of pronunciation. In higher-level courses, they began to work closely with the Cherokee syllabary, the language’s symbol-based writing system.

The Cherokee program also centers Cherokee cultural values in its coursework. Maya Foster GRD ’26, who has been auditing the course since last fall, noted an emphasis on the natural world, and highlighted the Cherokee word “ayetli,” meaning “middle.” For her, the Cherokee worldview is distinctly open, positioned “in the middle” to consider diverse perspectives — human and otherwise.

“It’s just a different way of thinking about relationships,” Foster explained. “It’s not necessarily human-centric, ‘me versus nature.’ It’s me and nature. We’re a part of nature.”

Students also described the course as a space to explore and compare their own Indigenous histories. Foster has Cherokee heritage on her mom’s side of the family and saw the class as a convenient way to learn more about her family history.

Walker, who is Chickasaw, found that certain topics like tribal governance and sovereignty were easier to talk about with other Indigenous people, who were more familiar with how nations are organized. He was also able to learn about the ways Chickasaw rituals, language and culture differ from Cherokee and other Indigenous experiences.

“It almost feels like home in some ways,” Walker said. “I feel like when we’re talking about these stories or learning the language or watching videos of people talking and the gatherings that they go to, it feels like it represents where I actually come from.”

In an email to the News, Del Percio wrote that they hope to launch an L5 Cherokee course in the 2025–26 academic year. The class may center around a project in which students create a Cherokee language resource for language learners beyond Yale. Del Percio also hopes to implement experiential learning opportunities for students, including visits to Cherokee communities in Oklahoma and North Carolina.

The NACC was established in 1993.