Joseph Erb, a Cherokee animator and educator, has dedicated more than two decades to preserving and sharing Indigenous stories through digital media and technology. Erb created the first animation in the Cherokee language, “The Beginning They Told,” which tells a traditional story featuring Grandpa Beaver, Little Water Beetle, and Great Buzzard Su Li. After the animation’s success, Erb chose to return to Oklahoma to teach animation and storytelling to Cherokee and Muscogee Creek youth, rather than accept an Ivy League teaching position.
Erb began by teaching stop-motion animation due to limited resources. He encouraged students to share and animate their own stories, fostering cultural exchange and language preservation within the classroom. In the late 2000s, Erb played a leading role in efforts to incorporate the Cherokee language into major technology platforms such as Apple’s iPhone, Google Search, Gmail, and Microsoft Windows. The initiative required extensive collaboration and thousands of hours of volunteer work from community members, resulting in more than 1.5 million translations.
In addition to his technology work, Erb is known for his artistic contributions as a sculptor, jeweler, and illustrator. His copper piece “Indigenous Brilliance,” created while teaching at the University of Missouri, is on display at the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma. The museum honored him with a “Creative Native” award in 2022.
Since joining UC Santa Cruz’s film and digital media department in 2022, Erb has contributed to a growing Indigenous studies community. He prioritizes intersectional approaches to filmmaking and aims to challenge perceptions that portray Indigenous cultures as relics of the past. “He’s a model for positive interaction,” said John Brown Childs, a Massachusett tribe member and professor emeritus at UC Santa Cruz. Childs noted Erb’s deep ties to his community and his willingness to support other Indigenous groups, including assisting with language revitalization efforts for the Massachusett tribe.
Celine Parreñas Shimizu, former Dean of the Arts at UC Santa Cruz, highlighted Erb’s commitment to serving his community through his research. “He said, ‘I don’t do my research for myself. I do it for the Cherokee people.’” She described Erb’s work as reflecting a living, thriving culture.
UC Santa Cruz is recognized as a center for research in language and artificial intelligence. Matthew Wagers, chair of the linguistics department, is leading a UC-wide initiative focused on increasing diversity in language technology. The project aims to address biases in large language models by expanding representation of different languages and speaking patterns, especially those from multilingual communities in California. Wagers pointed out that including languages like Cherokee in technology platforms is essential for accessibility. He said, “We live our lives online and through technology now, and if we simultaneously want to live our lives in the language of our community or of our family and heritage, there has to be an effort to bridge this gap.”
Erb noted the technical challenges of adapting digital tools for Cherokee, which uses 86 syllabary characters instead of an alphabet. He explained that creating digital keyboards and finding terms for modern concepts required innovative solutions. Looking ahead, Erb hopes to further develop voice-to-text capabilities for Cherokee, despite its tonal complexity.
Reflecting on his work, Erb said, “Our language is still in decline, but we have more tools than we used to when I started. The tech companies now take us seriously. When I first started reaching out, we weren’t even a thought.” He expressed satisfaction that current filmmakers and writers can now type in Cherokee, which he believes helps preserve vital cultural knowledge.
