WHAT:
Cherokee Nation will celebrate the grand opening of new office spaces in Kenwood for the Marshal Service and the Cherokee Language Department.
WHEN:
Friday, Sept. 26 at 11 a.m.
WHERE:
1210 County Road 487
Salina, Oklahoma
(Across from Cherokee Nation Woody Hair Community Center in Kenwood)
WHO:
Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr.
Deputy Chief Bryan Warner
Council of the Cherokee Nation
Cherokee Nation Cabinet
Cherokee Nation Language Department
Cherokee Nation Marshal Service
KENWOOD, Okla. — The Cherokee Nation will celebrate the opening of a new Marshal Service sub-station and a new Cherokee Language Department office in Kenwood. The offices are located next to the tribe’s 33,000-square-foot Woody Hair Community Center which opened 2024 and houses a Head Star facility, elder nutrition program, wellness space, and facilities that accommodate community and school functions.
The new Cherokee Nation Marshal Service sub-station is part of a five-year strategic plan for the law enforcement arm of the tribe, providing a small satellite office for deputy marshals operating in the northern region of the Cherokee Nation Reservation. Among the goals of the Office of the Marshal is embracing community policing practices, building confidence and visibility at the grassroots level along with improved response time.
The Cherokee Nation Marshal Service has law enforcement responsibility over the entirety of the 7,000 square mile Cherokee Nation Reservation, which includes rural, urban and suburban communities and millions of Natives and non-Natives who live, work or travel within the reservation. Within a 15-mile radius of Kenwood are nearly 16,000 Cherokee citizens.
The new Cherokee Language Department office will be home to the first Kenwood cohort of up to 16 Cherokee Language Master/Apprentice students. The Cherokee Nation established the Cherokee Language Master/Apprentice Program in 2014 to teach adults to be proficient conversational Cherokee speakers and teachers.
Participants receive an hourly educational stipend and typically spend 40 hours per week for two years immersed in the Cherokee language with master-level, fluent Cherokee speakers. So far, nearly 70 students have graduated through the Tahlequah-based program, and the first Kenwood cohort of students will begin soon.
The Cherokee Nation Language Department now estimates there are less than 1,500 first-language, fluent Cherokee speakers who are over the age of 60. The goal of the Language Department is to graduate more than 25 second-language speakers per year through the tribe’s language programs, including CLMAP.
Since taking office in 2019, Chief Hoskin and Deputy Chief Bryan Warner have worked with the Council of the Cherokee Nation to invest historic resources – more than $68 million – into Cherokee language capital projects. Last year, the Administration signed into law a permanent Durbin Feeling Language Preservation Act that sets aside a minimum budget of more than $18 million annually for Cherokee language efforts.