How National Geographic Used Cowbird Storytelling Tool to Tell a Reservation’s Whole Story: ”To make a really great narrative [in print] often means only telling the story of a couple of people, and trying to use those stories to tell the larger story of the community and where it’s going,” Huey said. “That’s often confusing for the community itself. People always asked me why I couldn’t fit in something about the all-star basketball team, or the scholars going on to college. Everyone wanted something specific and claimed that I was missing the entire story because I didn’t have those things. They felt like they were misrepresented. They felt like for decades in the media, they’d been misrepresented.”

See it in action, here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/

“You have a community that perhaps treasures media and cultural production more than almost any other constituency in the country, and you have an entire dearth of access to new media production and dissemination technology,” Meinrath said.

Since 2009, New America Foundation has worked with Native Public Media, which supports and advocates for Native American media outlets, to help tribal communities take advantage of new media platforms. In January, the organizations formalized their partnership, and this fall, they plan to launch a media literacy pilot project that will train Native radio broadcasters in at least four communities to tell stories using digital tools.

“It’s a very proactive way to address the digital divide, apart from the hardware,” said Loris Ann Taylor, president of Native Public Media. (read the full article here » )

The addition, announced today, means Cherokee speakers can now make it their default language for searches, and help keep the language alive. Google also introduced an on-screen keyboard option. In practice, this means anyone who can read and write Cherokee can look up anything on Google. Users can change their language setting to Cherokee here.

Cherokee, an Iroquoian language, did not have a written form until the early 19th century, when it got a syllabary (a set of written symbols to represent syllables) writing system. The Cherokee Nation has about 300,000 members, though only about 20,000 people speak the Cherokee language.

“I believe that efforts like those of Google are essential to keeping our language alive,” Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chad Smith said in a statement. “We have been working hard to get our young people interested in learning our Native tongue, but we cannot be successful unless they can read and write in the medium of their era -– all the digital devices that are currently so popular.”

With this latest addition, Google now supports 146 interface languages and encourages users to sign up for Google in Your Language to make a case for interfaces in other endangered languages.

Google made similar additions of other North American native languages Maya and Nahuatl last year.

First, make sure your phone is running the latest version of the iOS operating system. If it’s not, connecting your phone to iTunes on your computer will give you a prompt to upgrade.

If your phone is upgraded, first click on the gear-shaped “settings” icon on the phone.

Within settings select “general,” then “keyboard” and then “international keyboard.

Press “add new keyboard,” and you’ll get a list of all the languages supported. Select “Cherokee,” the fourth choice.

Bring up the keyboard using any action that requires it, such as text messaging. The keyboard should now have a globe button at the bottom left. Pressing it will toggle the keyboard between English and Cherokee.

By ROBERT EVATT World Staff Writer
Read more from this Tulsa World article at http://bit.ly/9lUfTq

Though the fifth-grade class at the Cherokee Nation Immersion School in Tahlequah use computers throughout the school day, their eyes light up when education services staff let them borrow iPhones.  Within seconds they cluster around the gadgets, happily tapping out messages like countless other cell-phone users.

But unlike most, their texts aren’t in English – they’re in Cherokee.

And they aren’t using specially modified iPhones. Every one of the estimated 100 million global iPhone users running iOS 4.1, the latest version of the smart phone’s software released last month, already have support for the distinct Cherokee language within their device.

Chad Smith, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, said the decision by Apple Inc. to make Cherokee one of the 40 languages supported by iPhones isn’t just a great honor, it’s a true milestone for the tribe’s language.

“People might think it’s a novelty, but where you can see the importance is when you remember 1822, when the Cherokee written language was developed,” he said. “It was also seen as a novelty, but within 10 years 90 percent of Cherokees were literate.”

Smith’s hope is that smart-phone support will ensure the Cherokee language, which now has an estimated 8,000 fluent and over 200 literate, remains healthy and useful to younger tribe members in an increasingly digital age.

“By default, our children have a way to learn the language in a method they’re familiar,” he said.

And tech workers within the tribe are hoping the language support will open up a flood of apps to make it vastly easier for Cherokees to stay within the language.

The Cherokee Nation Immersion School, a facility run by the nation that has children communicating solely in Cherokee from first bell to last, has incorporated iMacs loaded with the language and a Cherokee keyboard since Apple’s full-scale computer started supporting it in 2003.

Joseph Erb, an education services group worker for the nation, said the computers are a great way to learn Cherokee within the classroom, but that influence can be limited.

“We have to figure out ways to get the children to stay in the language,” he said. “Once you leave these doors, it’s all English.”

And there’s seemingly little modern youths love more than communicating on cell phones. Lauren Hummingbird, a fifth-grade student at the immersion school, said she uses three different cell phones within her family and was excited to hear that she’ll be able to use some in Cherokee.

“I love it,” she said.

Erb said the process of including Cherokee on the iPhone began three years ago. The tribal government has a sales team in touch with Apple and other companies, and workers passed on documentation for the language to Apple.

“Apple’s an easy group to work with,” he said.

But they’re also a company that keeps a tight lid on potential developments, so tribe employees didn’t know it was coming until the beta version of iOS 4.1 came out a month before its widespread release. Tech workers for the nation helped fine-tune the language support.

Erb said the Cherokee Nation had already released several iPhone apps before the language support came out, including a Cherokee dictionary, the Cherokee constitution and a portal for the Cherokee Phoenix, the nation’s official newspaper.

But having the language embedded in the phone itself will make development of apps that use the Cherokee language much easier.

“Before, to develop an app in Cherokee took some trickery,” he said.

The iPad will hopefully get Cherokee language support for its virtual keyboard in the near future, as Apple plans to soon have the same operating system running the iPhone and iPad, Erb said.

Read more from this Tulsa World article.