Cherokee Immersion School
The Cherokee Immersion School (, "Tsalagi Tsunadeloquasdi") is a Cherokee language immersion school in Tahlequah, Oklahoma for children during pre-school to grade 6. It was founded by the Cherokee Nation in 2001 for the purpose of preserving the heavily endangered Cherokee language. Students must be members of a federally recognized tribe, and an application process is used as class size is limited. After finishing at the Cherokee Immersion School, students typically transfer to an affiliated school for grades 7 and 8. Attending the immersion school can help students enroll into Sequoyah High School (grades 9 through 12 ). Total enrollment was reported to be 141 in August 2018. Background. There were 1,520 Cherokee speakers out of 376,000 Cherokee in 2018 according to Ethnologue, which classified the language as "moribund", meaning children are not learning and speaking the language. Only a handful of people under 40 years of age are fluent, and about 8 speakers die each month. In 2018, 1,200 speakers were present in the Cherokee Nation and 101 were present in the United Keetoowah Band. The Kituwah (Middle or Eastern) dialect, which is taught at New Kituwah Academy in North Carolina, was known by ~220 Eastern Band  Cherokee in 2018. In June 2019, the Tri-Council of Cherokee tribes declared a state of emergency for the language due to the threat of it going extinct, calling for the enhancement of revitalization programs. A tally by the three tribes had garnered a list of ~2,100 remaining speakers at that time. Second campus. A second campus was added in November 2021, when the school purchased Greasy School in Greasy, Oklahoma, located in southern Adair County ten miles south of Stilwell. Situated in largest area of Cherokee speakers in the world, the opportunity for that campus is for students to  spend the day in an immersion school and then return to a Cherokee-speaking home.