Rabbit and the Sticky Doll

NSU students present Cherokee play at symposium

By Tesina JacksonStudents of Northeastern State University’s Intermediate Cherokee II and Advanced Cherokee II classes normally present talks on a topic or theme at the school’s annual Symposium on the American Indian. But for this year’s symposium, held April 11-16, they presented a play in Cherokee.

“There was a number of students who indicated and said they would work and spend time putting on a play,” Wyman Kirk, NSU instructor of the Cherokee Language Degree Program, said. “So we identified the story. They did their characters line-by-line translation and then we met as a group. They had their lines reviewed by fluent Native speakers to adjust, correct and then we talked about, not just the script and what they had, but language ideas.”

The idea of a play was brought up at the beginning of the semester. The students decided on the Cherokee traditional story “ Jisdu Jujalesdi Anehldi” or “Rabbit and the Sticky Doll” and presented it as a puppet show at the symposium on April 14.

The story of the “Rabbit and the Sticky Doll” is a Cherokee tale about the animals finding themselves without water during a drought. They get together and build a well. All of the animals help except for rabbit, who sleeps while they work and claims he can gather water from dew drops.