Durbin Feeling

Durbin Duran Feeling (; April 2, 1946 – August 19, 2020) was a Cherokee Nation linguist who wrote the primary Cherokee–English dictionary in 1975. He is considered the greatest modern contributor to the preservation of the endangered Cherokee language.

Early life and education Feeling was born on April 2, 1946, to Jeff and Elizabeth Feeling in the Little Rock community east of Locust Grove, Oklahoma. Cherokee was his first language; he learned English when he was in the first grade. He was drafted into the Army in 1967 and served as a door gunner during the Vietnam War. He began to write in the Cherokee syllabary when corresponding with his mother while he was in Vietnam.

Career Durbin began his work with the Cherokee language when he returned from Vietnam. It remains the "standard publication for Cherokee language reference".

He died August 19, 2020. and a 2022 amendment of the Native American Languages Act for promoting the use of indigenous languages in the United States.

The Sam Noble Museum 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.