Joseph Erb, a Cherokee animator and educator, has played a significant role in advancing Indigenous language and culture through technology and the arts. Erb is known for directing the first animation in the Cherokee language, “The Beginning They Told,” which shares a story about the creation of the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains. After the animation’s success, Erb declined a teaching position at an Ivy League university, choosing instead to return to Oklahoma to teach animation and storytelling to Cherokee and Muscogee Creek students.
Erb began his teaching career with limited resources, using stop motion animation when computers were not widely available. He encouraged students to share and animate Cherokee stories, fostering cultural exchange within the classroom.
In the late 2000s, Erb led efforts to integrate the Cherokee language into major technology platforms. Initially rejected by Microsoft for not having enough speakers, Erb and his team approached Apple in 2007. After a successful meeting that included the Cherokee Nation’s chief and other community members, Cherokee became the first Indigenous language supported on Apple devices with the iPhone OS 4.1 release in 2010. Google and Microsoft later followed, adding Cherokee to their platforms after extensive community-driven translation work.
Erb’s contributions extend beyond technology. He is also recognized as a sculptor, jeweler, and illustrator of children’s stories about Indigenous culture. His digital illustration “Indigenous Brilliance,” created while teaching at the University of Missouri, is displayed at the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma, where he received the “Creative Native” award in 2022.
Since joining the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) film and digital media department as an associate professor in 2022, Erb has contributed to the university’s growing Indigenous studies community. He focuses on intersectional approaches to filmmaking and emphasizes the importance of representing Indigenous cultures as contemporary and forward-looking.
John Brown Childs, a distinguished emeritus professor of sociology at UCSC and member of the Massachusett tribe, described Erb as “a model for positive interaction,” highlighting his generosity and commitment to supporting both his own and other Indigenous communities. Erb assisted Childs’s tribe with language revitalization efforts and is seen as an example of effective faculty recruitment at UCSC.
Celine Parreñas Shimizu, former Dean of the Arts at UCSC, noted Erb’s dedication to serving the Cherokee people through his research and teaching. She said, “He redefines how we think of the role of scholarship in society — it’s really to serve community, and his media reflects a living thriving culture of people who’ve never vanished.”
UC Santa Cruz has also been recognized as a center for research on language and artificial intelligence (AI). Matthew Wagers, professor and department chair of linguistics, is leading an initiative to create a cross-campus research network focused on diversity in language technology across six University of California campuses. The project aims to address biases in AI language models by ensuring diverse linguistic representation and is set to conclude in fall 2026.
Wagers emphasized the importance of including various languages and speaking patterns in AI development, stating, “There are opportunities to improve language technologies to address the needs of people who speak or communicate differently, such as people who stutter, or language users who are blind.” He cited Erb’s work on integrating Cherokee into technology platforms as a model for expanding access.
The integration of Cherokee into digital technology presented unique challenges due to its syllabary writing system with 86 characters. Erb recalled the difficulties in designing keyboards and creating new words for modern concepts like email. Looking ahead, he hopes to develop voice-to-text capabilities for Cherokee, acknowledging the complexities introduced by its tonal nature.
Reflecting on his career, 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 noted that advancements now allow filmmakers and writers to type in Cherokee, helping preserve cultural knowledge.
