Author: TLC Publishing

Got Homework? So does Brother Bear, and he tries to get out of it. Let Matȟó Waúŋšila Thiwáhe (the Compassionate Bear Family, a.k.a. the Berenstain Bears) help you with your Lakota language study.

HOMEWORK HASSLE

Brother Bear complains that he’s given too much homework and that’s why he has fallen so far behind at school. Papa blames it on his highly distractive study environment and until Brother gets caught 
up, there’ll be no television, video games, loud music or chatting on the phone. When Brother decides to do a little homework every night, he finds it’s much easier to stay on top of his workload.

 

Each Matȟó Waúŋšila Thiwáhe episode comes with free extras for download: a complete script in Lakota, a vocabulary sheet with English translations, and comprehension questions (in Lakota) to check your understanding of the action.

Matȟó Waúŋšila Thiwáhe is a co-production of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Lakota Language Consortium, Berenstain Enterprises and Nelvana Limited. Episodes were first broadcast in 2011 on Prairie Public Television.

 

 

The Lakota Language Consortium has adopted digital technology and social media to make language learning more fun and playful, something you come back to every day.  This Fall we look forward to shipping our new Lakota Audio Series for conversational lessons on everyday topics.

Today we want to spotlight a project that was begun by a few learners and speakers who wanted their own digital gathering place.

One of our Forum members set up a community for beginning Lakota language learners on Facebook, with unexpected success.  “Lakota Language for Beginners” opened up with just 60 members and has quickly grown to more than 8,000.

It is “an open group for those just beginning to learn the Lakota language, or who are completely unfamiliar with it, with downloadable lessons that have an emphasis on introductory phrases, basic grammar, and elementary vocabulary,” according to the site’s introduction.

Founder Charles B. Smith of Gettysburg, SD has help from fluent members as “teaching admins,” to post sentences with translations, and discuss words and grammar of Lakota.  All members are encouraged to use the standard orthography developed for the New Lakota Dictionary, and all are encouraged to try posting remarks and updates in Lakota.

Smith says that of the 8,000+ members, about 100 are “very active” with regular posts and comments. The teaching admin whom members call the “resident teacher” is Les Ducheneaux, a retired Lakota language teacher from Tiospaye Topa School on Cheyenne River.

LLC is proud to see that so many Lakota speakers and learners have set up their own village in cyberspace, to help one another bring back the language.  Wóphila! Taŋyáŋ ečhánuŋpi!  (“Thank you! Well done!”)

School’s in!  Let Matȟó Waúŋšila Thiwáhe (the Compassionate Bear Family, a.k.a. the Berenstain Bears) help you with your Lakota language homework by telling you about Brother Bear’s problems at school.

TROUBLE AT SCHOOL

Brother Bear has been kept home from school for a few days with the flu and neglects to do the schoolwork that Sister delivered from his teacher. As a result, Brother’s next math test mark is zero and he 
doesn’t know how to break the bad news to Mama and Papa. He turns to Gramps and Gran for help and learns that getting a problem out in the open goes a long way toward solving it.

Each Matȟó Waúŋšila Thiwáhe episode comes with free extras for download:  a complete script in Lakota, a vocabulary sheet with English translations, and comprehension questions (in Lakota) to check your understanding of the action.

Matȟó Waúŋšila Thiwáhe is a co-production of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Lakota Language Consortium, Berenstain Enterprises and Nelvana Limited. Episodes were first broadcast in 2011 on Prairie Public Television.

Four Lakota tribal schools have emerged from the 2013-2014 school year showing real strength in teaching the language.  Comparison of test scores between the September 2013 pre-testing and May 2014 post-testing proves that students at all grade levels are improving and advancing.

Elementary schools

Most Improved — Cheyenne-Eagle Butte Early Elementary (Cheyenne River)

Best Overall — Cheyenne-Eagle Butte Early Elementary (Cheyenne River)

Junior High schools

Most Improved — Rock Creek Grant School (Standing Rock)

Best Overall — Red Shirt School (Hermosa, SD, Shannon County)

High Schools

Most Improved — Red Cloud High School (Pine Ridge)

Best Overall — Red Cloud High School (Pine Ridge)

Kili! These schools will be recognized with awards at the upcoming Lakota-Dakota Language Summit October 10-12 in Rapid City, SD.

Outstanding news from our friends at Lakota Immersion Childcare!

Lakota Immersion Childcare (Iyápi Glukínipi), a language revitalization initiative based in Oglala, SD, recently received a sizable three-year grant from the Administration for Native Americans (ANA).

These funds were awarded through the exceedingly competitive Native American Language Preservation and Maintenance initiative (NALPM) which, in addition to supporting immersion endeavors, provides grants for curriculum development, teacher training, and technology used to disseminate and preserve Native American languages.

ANA awarded approximately $2.6 million in new NALPM grants for 2014, which were conferred on 13 recipient organizations. Lakota Immersion Childcare, which is receiving the funds via its fiscal sponsor, Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, is the only organization in the Dakotas to be awarded ANA language funds, and one of only three in the Great Plains area.

Lakota Immersion Childcare currently has a staff of five, including two administrators, and three fluent speakers who work with the children on a daily basis. Their enrollment is currently 15 children, and the program admits a new cohort of five toddlers between 18-24 months of age each fall. The ANA funds will enable the program to develop and expand over the next three years and beyond, according to their long term plan, which includes partnering with a local school to create a full-immersion elementary program.

 

Kili! Taŋyáŋ ečhánuŋpi! (Fantastic! Well done, congratulations!)

 

Tusweca Tiospaye has announced a special two-day breakout session during the 2014 Lakota-Dakota Language Summit in Rapid City, SD in October — one that will earn its students college credit at Sitting Bull College.

The Intensive Lakota/Dakota Language for Beginners breakout session is “designed for second-language learners who are at a beginner to elementary level,” according to Tusweca’s release. “It will give an overview of Lakota/Dakota pronunciation and how to use a Lakota/Dakota dictionary for self-learning.”

Attendees will need to complete an application to Sitting Bull College, and have a GED or high school diploma, to participate. Participating in both classes during the Summit’s breakout sessions will earn learners one 16-hour credit from Sitting Bull.

Instructors are Nacole Walker, Sunshine Carlow and Michael Moore. All have been instructors or staff at the annual Lakota Summer Institute, which is a joint program of Sitting Bull College, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the Lakota Language Consortium. Tusweca has initiated this two-day class at the Summit to support language learners who can’t attend the Summer Institute.

Lakota language teachers can also earn Continuing Education Units through Sitting Bull College just for attending the Summit.

Contacts for more information are found at the Summit’s College Credit page.  The Summit is scheduled for Friday through Sunday, October 10-12, at the Rushmore Plaza Holiday Inn.

 

We’re sharing this appeal from the Linguistic Society of America and CELP, the Committee on Endangered Languages and their Preservation. It’s a simple way to keep up on Congress’ consideration of two important pieces of legislation supporting preservation and education in endangered Native American languages.

              

CELP and LSA say:

This is just a reminder to please contact your congresspeople to request their support and possible co-sponsorship of these important bills that will potentially impact the future of Native American languages:

H.R.726/S.2299 Native American Languages Reauthorization Act of 2014

H.R.4214/S.1948 Native Language Immersion Student Achievement Act

The bills are moving onto the floor for debate and looking (cautiously) positive for passage in the Senate. The House may be another matter, but there’s always room for hope.

The LSA’s webpage for tracking this legislation is available HERE.

HERE is a template you can use to contact members of Congress.

You can, of course, make changes to the template provided before sending it. There’s also a SHORTLINK for the call-to-action form—-if that’s helpful for social or print media.

Finally, if you’re interested, here are the webpages which track Congressional co-sponsors (the Senators and Representatives supporting the measures) for the two Senate bills and their House counterparts.

S. 1948 and H.R 4214

S. 2299 and H.R. 726

Feel free to pass this information along to colleagues and friends, and thank you all for any effort you can make on behalf of this legislation.

There’s good news out of Congress for Native American languages, thanks to intensive effort by the Linguistic Society of America’s Committee on Endangered Languages and their Preservation (CELP)!

Two pieces of legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate earlier this year, S. 1948, the “Native Language Immersion Student Achievement Act” and S. 2299, the “Native American Languages Reauthorization Act of 2014,” were both approved by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on July 30, 2014.  This means both bills can be considered by the full Senate soon.S. 1948 is known as HR. 4124 and S. 2229 is H.R. 726 in the U.S. House of Representatives.

CELP and LSA ran a heated campaign to get their supporters – and anyone else who supports the preservation of endangered languages – to contact their senators and representatives to support the two bills. This vocal pressure worked, and both bills now have bipartisan support in the Senate.

As of July 30, 2014, the list of Sponsors includes these elected representatives:

Senate Bill Sponsors

• Brian Schatz – S.1948 & S.2299 co-sponsor; HI
• Mark Begich – S.1948 & S.2299 co-sponsor; AK
• Tim Johnson – S.1948 co-sponsor, S.2299 lead sponsor; SD
• Max Baucus – S.1948 co-sponsor; MT (no longer serving in the Senate)
• Tom Udall – S.1948 & S.2299 co-sponsor; NM
• Lisa Murkowski – S.1948 & S.2299 co-sponsor; AK
• Heidi Heitkamp – S.1948 co-sponsor; SD
• John Walsh- S.1948 & S.2299 co-sponsor; MT
• Martin Heinrich – S.1948 & S.2299 co-sponsor; NM
• Al Franken – S.2299 co-sponsor; MN
• Mazie Hirono – S.2299 co-sponsor; HI
• Jon Tester – S.1948 lead sponsor, S.2299 co-sponsor; MT
• Angus King – S.2299 co-sponsor; ME

 

House Bill Sponsors

• Ben Ray Lujan – H.R.726 lead sponsor; NM-3
• Colleen Hanabusa – H.R.726 co-sponsor; HI-1
• Lucille Roybal-Allard – H.R.726 co-sponsor; CA-40
• James Moran – H.R.726 co-sponsor; VA-8
• Gloria Negrete McLeod – H.R.726 co-sponsor; CA-35
• Louise Slaughter – H.R.726 co-sponsor; NY-25
• Betty McCollum – H.R.726 & H.R. 4214 co-sponsor; MN-4
• Stevan Pearce – H.R.726 co-sponsor; NM-2
• Raul Grijalva – H.R.726 co-sponsor; AZ-3
• Ed Pastor – H.R.726 co-sponsor; AZ-7
• Raul Ruiz – H.R.726 co-sponsor; CA-36
• Tom Cole – H.R.4214 lead sponsor; OK-4

 

The LSA has sent thank-you letters to all current legislative sponsors of the bills. If your members of Congress are listed as sponsors, you may wish to do the same – by clicking here, where the National Humanities Alliance has established an action alert.

A Lakota-Dakota-speaking Berenstain Bears cartoon is the kid magnet at the new Innovation Gallery at the State Historical Society of North Dakota. The Gallery is one of four new galleries built in the Society’s newly expanded Heritage Center educational museum space.

You can see that children hear the language on the telephone handsets while seeing the animated cartoon action and reading the English translation off to the side. The cartoon is “Homework Hassle,” dubbed into Lakota-Dakota for the 2011 PBS series Matȟó Waúŋšila Thiwáhe, produced by the Lakota Language Consortium as part of their mission to promote the language to the wider public.

Chris Johnson, Museum Division Director at the Society, told us how the cartoon — and the region’s many indigenous languages – all fit into the Innovation Gallery’s educational intent.

“When we were designing this exhibit, we went out to the five reservations in North Dakota, and talked with people about what we hoped to do in the gallery,” Johnson said. The two galleries now open – Adaptation and Innovation – look at two different stages of North Dakota history: Adaptation is pre-human, ie. dinosaur fossils and geologic record until the end of the last Ice Age 13,000 years ago, and Innovation shows the development of human societies from the end of the Ice Age until 1860.

“We took public feedback and had a team of advisors from each reservation,” Johnson said. “What came back in comments was the importance of presenting the tribal language – whether in New Town, Spirit Lake, Standing Rock, or wherever, it was a universal comment.  So we made sure we worked languages in wherever we could.”

The Innovation Gallery exhibit incorporates Plains sign language as intertribal communications, and winter counts to show how the Plains peoples recorded their long-term history.  However, Johnson says, the exhibit designers also wanted to talk about “how contemporary tribes today are working to either preserve or revive languages, and how for a language to be viable is it has to be current, relevant to today’s world.  So we thought the Lakota Berenstain Bears cartoon would show how to take a language some would think was from the past, and make it relevant today.”

Johnson contacted LLC for permission to use the cartoon.  How could we say no?

Johnson admitted that the Society sought an easy way to get past the closeness of “Lakota” and “Dakota” languages – so they just used “Dakota” as a universal term for the tribes speaking those related tongues.

There are other uses of regional languages significant to the Innovation Gallery.  Each section of the Gallery has a panel to introduce the section’s theme with a quote from one of the languages, printed in English but with a push-button audio option that lets the visitor hear the quote spoken in that language. The section on the history of horses in the Plains region is introduced in Lakota.

The Lakota-language play, Iktómi Lečhála Tȟawíčutȟuŋ (Iktomi’s New Wife) has its premiere tonight at 7 pm at the Standing Rock High School Auditorium, 9819 Highway 24 in Fort Yates.  Admission is FREE.

Blaze Starkey and Peter Hill practice being Meadowlarks

It’s based on two Iktomi stories, one of which is well-known: “Iktomi’s Blanket.” That story was collected in Old Indian Legends by Zitkala-Ša, published in 1901.

The other is “Iktomi and the Ignorant Girl.”  This was collected by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz in the book American Indian Myths and Legends, published in 1984, and the story is recounted as one from the “Brule Sioux” people.

Picture this: two oral-tradition stories were written down in English, then adapted in English to be one story for the theater. Then that story was translated into Lakota by the actors – and back into English for supertitles projected for the audience!

Iktómi Lečhála Tȟawíčutȟuŋ (Iktomi’s New Wife) has its first performance on Thursday night, June 19, at 7 pm, at the Standing Rock High School Auditorium: 9189 Highway 24, Fort Yates, ND, Standing Rock. The Director is Steve Elm (Oneida), a professional actor-writer-director based in New York and Virginia.

Admission is FREE, so come on down and bring your friends!