Schon Duncan
Director · b. 1989 · Tahlequah - Oklahoma - USA
Schon Duncan (ᎤᎶᎩᎳ) is a citizen of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, a Cherokee language teacher, filmmaker, writer and community advocate. They currently teach Cherokee at the University of Oklahoma, where their courses center on conversation and the cultural history of the Cherokee peoples. Duncan co-directed the award-winning documentary ᏓᏗᏬᏂᏏ: We Will Speak, which follows Cherokee speakers and learners in their efforts to sustain the language. He has also contributed to Cherokee-language media through ᎢᎾᎨᎢ (Inage'i), a children's television series, and ᎠᏅᏛᏁᎵᏍᎩ (Anvdvnelisgi), a compilation album of new Cherokee songs across multiple genres. In 2025, Schon was honored by the UKB as a “Keetoowah Tradition Keeper.” As a 2024 Forge Project Fellow and 2025 Rooted Future Fund recipient, Duncan continues to create Cherokee-language films and resources that connect traditional knowledge with future generations. Their teaching, scholarship, and creative practice all seek to sustain and expand spaces for Cherokee language, identity, and futures. Their work frequently focuses on how traditional stories can reconnect queer-identifying individuals to their traditional communities to remain and strengthen cultural continuity.
Movies1
Movie10.0DocumentaryThe Cherokee language is deeply tied to Cherokee identity; yet generations of assimilation efforts by the U.S. government and anti-Indigenous stigmas have forced the Tri-Council of Cherokee tribes to declare a State of Emergency for the language in 2019. While there are 430,000 Cherokee citizens in the three federally recognized tribes, fewer than an estimated 2,000 fluent speakers remain—the majority of whom are elderly. The covid pandemic has unfortunately hastened the course. Language activists, artists, and the youth must now lead the charge of urgent radical revitalization efforts to help save the language from the brink of extinction.