Durbin Feeling ( chr, ᏫᎵ ᏚᎥᎢᏅ, translit=Wili Duvinv; April 2, 1946August 19, 2020) was a

Cherokee Nation The Cherokee Nation (Cherokee: ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ ''Tsalagihi Ayeli'' or ᏣᎳᎩᏰᎵ ''Tsalagiyehli''), also known as the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is the largest of three Cherokee federally recognized tribes in the United States. It ...

linguist who wrote the primary Cherokee–English

dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies ...

in 1975. He is considered the greatest modern contributor to the preservation of the

endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and inva ...

Cherokee language 200px, Number of speakers Cherokee or Tsalagi ( chr, ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ, ) is an endangered-to-moribund Iroquoian language and the native language of the Cherokee people. ''Ethnologue'' states that there were 1,520 Cherokee speaker ...

Early life

Feeling was born on April 2, 1946, to Jeff and Elizabeth Feeling in the Little Rock community east of

Locust Grove, Oklahoma Locust Grove is a town in Mayes County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 1,423 at the 2010 census, a 4.2 percent increase over the figure of 1,366 recorded in 2000. History Locust Grove was the site of the Battle of Locust Grove, a ...

. Cherokee was his first language; he learned English when he was in the first grade. He began to read Cherokee syllabary when he was 12 years old. Feeling graduated from

Chilocco Indian School Chilocco Indian School was an agricultural school for Native Americans on reserved land in north-central Oklahoma from 1884 to 1980. It was approximately 20 miles north of Ponca City, Oklahoma and seven miles north of Newkirk, Oklahoma, near ...

Native American boarding school American Indian boarding schools, also known more recently as American Indian residential schools, were established in the United States from the mid 17th to the early 20th centuries with a primary objective of "civilizing" or assimilating Na ...

) in 1964 and earned an associate's degree from Bacone College in 1966. He was drafted into the Army in 1967 and served as a door gunner during the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

. He began to write in Cherokee

syllabary In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) moras which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (optiona ...

when corresponding with his mother while he was in Vietnam. He was awarded a

Purple Heart The Purple Heart (PH) is a United States military decoration awarded in the name of the President to those wounded or killed while serving, on or after 5 April 1917, with the U.S. military. With its forerunner, the Badge of Military Merit, w ...

, and he was honorably discharged in 1970.

Career

Durbin began his work with the Cherokee language when he returned from Vietnam. In 1975, Feeling co-wrote the first Cherokee–English dictionary. It remains the "standard publication for Cherokee language reference". Feeling earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from

Northeastern State University Northeastern State University (NSU) is a public university with its main campus in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. The university also has two other campuses in Muskogee and Broken Arrow as well as online. Northeastern is the oldest institution of high ...

in 1979 and earned a master's degree in social sciences from the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and pr ...

in 1992. Feeling taught Cherokee at universities including the

University of Oklahoma The University of Oklahoma (OU) is a Public university, public research university in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it had existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two Territories became the state of Oklahom ...

, the

University of Tulsa The University of Tulsa (TU) is a private research university in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It has a historic affiliation with the Presbyterian Church and the campus architectural style is predominantly Collegiate Gothic. The school traces its origin to ...

, and the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

. He authored or contributed to many books and research articles about Cherokee. His materials for Cherokee language learners remain widely used, and many Cherokee language teachers learned directly from Feeling. Feeling worked for the Cherokee Nation from 1976 to 2020, including in its language translation and technology department. In the 1980s, he added the Cherokee syllabary to a word processor. He also contributed to the addition of the Cherokee syllabary to Unicode, which allows it to be widely available on computers and smartphones.

Personal life and death

Feeling was a

Baptist Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only (believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul compete ...

lay minister Lay minister may refer to: * Licensed lay minister, a lay person authorised to conduct certain services and perform other priestly duties in the Anglican church * A lay minister in other denominations. See lay ministry and laity In religious org ...

. He died August 19, 2020.

Influence and legacy

For his contributions to the preservation of the

and

Cherokee culture Cherokee society ( in the Cherokee language) is the culture and societal structures shared by the Cherokee Peoples. It can also mean the extended family or village. The Cherokee are Indigenous to the mountain and inland regions of the southeaster ...

, Feeling was named a

Cherokee National Treasure Cherokee National Treasure is a distinction created in 1988 by the Cherokee Nation to recognize people who have made significant contributions to the preservation of the tribe's art, language Language is a structured system of communicati ...

by the

. He was also awarded an

honorary doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hon ...

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

. Cherokee Nation Principal Chief

Chuck Hoskin, Jr. Chuck Hoskin Jr. (born 1974/1975) is a Cherokee-American politician and attorney currently serving as the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation since 2019. Hoskin has previously served as a Tribal Councilor for the Cherokee Nation between 2007 ...

has described Feeling as "a modern-day

Sequoyah Sequoyah (Cherokee language, Cherokee: ᏍᏏᏉᏯ, ''Ssiquoya'', or ᏎᏉᏯ, ''Se-quo-ya''; 1770 – August 1843), also known as George Gist or George Guess, was a Native Americans in the United States, Native American polymath of the Ch ...

" (referring to the creator of the Cherokee syllabary) and said that " erything we are doing for language revitalization is because of Durbin.” In 2019, the

chose Feeling as the first signatory of the Cherokee Language Speakers Roll. Feeling is the namesake of the

's language learning center (the Durbin Feeling Language Center) and 2022 legislation protecting indigenous languages (the Durbin Feeling Native American Languages Act). The

Sam Noble Museum Sam, SAM or variants may refer to: Places * Sam, Benin * Sam, Boulkiemdé, Burkina Faso * Sam, Bourzanga, Burkina Faso * Sam, Kongoussi, Burkina Faso * Sam, Iran * Sam, Teton County, Idaho, United States, a populated place People and fictio ...

holds the Durbin Feeling Collection, containing his extensive Cherokee-language materials, including letters written in Cherokee to and from members of Feeling’s family.

Selected works

* Feeling, Durbin. ''Cherokee–English Dictionary''. Tahlequah: Cherokee Nation, 1975. * Feeling, Durbin. ''A structured approach to learning the basic inflections of the Cherokee verb''. Neff Publishing Company, 1994. * * Pulte, William, and Durbin Feeling. "Morphology in Cherokee Lexicography." ''Making dictionaries: Preserving indigenous languages of the Americas'' (2002): 60. * Feeling, Durbin, ed. ''See-say-write: Method of Teaching the Cherokee Language''. Cherokee Nation, Indian Adult Education, 2002. * Feeling, Durbin, et al. "A handbook of the Cherokee verb: a preliminary study." Tahlequah, Okla.: Cherokee Heritage Center (2003). * Feeling, Durbin, et al. "Why revisit published data of an endangered language with native speakers? An illustration from Cherokee." ''Language Documentation & Conservation'' 4 (2010): 1-21. * * Herrick, Dylan, Marcellino Berardo, Durbin Feeling, et al. "Collaborative documentation and revitalization of Cherokee tone." ''Language Documentation & Conservation'' 9 (2015): 12-31. * Feeling, Durbin. ''Cherokee Narratives: A Linguistic Study''. University of Oklahoma Press, 2018.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Feeling, Durbin Cherokee language Linguists from the United States 1946 births 2020 deaths People from Mayes County, Oklahoma Military personnel from Oklahoma Northwestern State University alumni University of California, Irvine alumni Writers from Oklahoma Translation dictionaries American lexicographers American translators Cherokee Nation writers United States Army personnel of the Vietnam War Alumni of Native American boarding schools Language teachers Bacone College alumni University of Oklahoma faculty University of Tulsa faculty University of California faculty United States Army soldiers 20th-century Native American writers Native American Christians Baptists from Oklahoma Native American linguists 21st-century Native American writers