As a storyteller, preacher, and actor, Robert Bushyhead has masterfully used both English and Cherokee languages. He continues his lifelong work of preserving the Cherokee language through documentation of the Kituhwa dialect.

Born and raised in a one-room log cabin in the Birdtown community of the Qualla Boundary, Robert Bushyhead recalls images of the medicine man's hands, warmed over hot coals, and the healing formulas he spoke and wrote in the Cherokee language. Cherokee was the sole language of his family and friends, and it was his only language until he attended boarding school. Teachers at the government boarding school, in their efforts to teach English, punished students for speaking Cherokee. "And the thing about this," he says, "was that those who became parents did not teach their children the Cherokee language lest they go through the same punishment."

When he had the opportunity to complete his education, he became a Southern Baptist home missionary to the Eastern Cherokees, and then a traveling evangelist. For seventeen years he also performed in Unto These Hills, the outdoor drama presented by the Cherokee Historical Association, where he brought great distinction to the role of Elias C. Boudinot. He credited his ability to play his role convincingly to his passion for the history and culture of his people.

Robert Bushyhead works almost daily with his daughter and a local videographer to record the sounds of his native language along with its grammar. "No other language sounds exactly like it, and we want to preserve this," he says. "We have all of those sounds - there are eighty-five of them - and just a little inflection makes all the difference in the world. Cherokee has a flow, it has a rhythm that is beautiful. And once you lose that rhythm, then, of course, you're lost."

For his work on language preservation projects, Bushyhead has received numerous awards including the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award and the Mountain Heritage Award. His stories have been published in Living Stories of the Cherokee and in Yonder Mountain, a children’s book.