by Hilary Sigler
Students and faculty members from the University of West Georgia overflowed TLC room 1301 on Tuesday, April 2, for the Waring Distinguished Lecture Series in Anthropology. The large crowd was forced to move to TLC room 1305, which is a one of the largest lecture halls at UWG.
The great amount of attendance was to support Waring Distinguished Lecturer Tom Belt. Tom is a Cherokee language program coordinator at Western Carolina University in North Carolina and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. As a fluent speaker of the Cherokee language, he has been working closely with native speakers from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians to create literary material based on the Cherokee language. Tom also believes that with the help of this material, the native youth will become fluent in the language, and this will preserve the language for the future.
During the lecture, he charmed the audience with stories about his life experiences with the Cherokee language. He explained the creation of the language and culture, and the great meaning it has to the Cherokee people.
“Language is a beautiful cultural object,” says Tom. “It is sacred because it was given to us by the Creator. Languages will be lost if nobody will learn them. Any language is simply the way in which one interprets the world. In the way you hear it, you create the sounds and metaphors that describe the meaning of the world, so in a way each language has a different coding that means something very different to speakers of other languages. We are given a different way to view the world by speaking another language, and if everyone speaks the same language we lose the ability to view the world differently. Language is our culture!”
Tom Belt’s attendance at the Waring Distinguished Lecture Series in Anthropology was made possible through the Antonio J. Waring Jr. Scholarship Fund. For more information on the Cherokee language and Tom Belt’s efforts for preserving it, please visit www.facebook.com/WCUCherokeeLanguage or culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/csq/article/preschool-program-revitalizing-cherokee-language. For more information on the Antonio J. Waring, Jr. Scholarship Fund, please visit waring.westga.edu.
