We Speak, Therefore We Are

November 27, 2017
Marcus Briggs-Cloud

Marcus Briggs-Cloud, MTS ’10, has dedicated his life to revitalizing his ancestral tongue and the cultural identity it sustains.

An indigenous Maskoke, for more than a decade he has been teaching his native language to college and high school students and preverbal infants, including his own children, to whom he has never spoken a word of English. He returned to the Divinity School in October 2017 to participate in the biennial Native American Speaker Series.

For part two of a two-part series of discussions with Native American language preservationists, Briggs-Cloud sat down with the Harvard Gazette to discuss his work since leaving Cambridge.