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Lakota Weekend aims to revitalize language

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NewsCenter1 | October 6, 2019

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RAPID CITY, S.D. – In Rapid City Saturday and Sunday, Lakota speakers were at the Holiday Inn to introduce the endangered language to newcomers for Lakota Language Weekend.

Nearly 60 people registered for the crash course, some local and some from as far away as Germany.

The courses covered basics like how to introduce oneself in Lakota and how to say common phrases. Afternoon discussions dove into verb conjugations.

Allen Wilson was instructing Saturday’s lesson. He’s a Lakota language instructor for Todd County Schools and has been teaching for six years.

He says this weekend is about revitalization and bridging the connection between elders and the current generation.

“Who’s going to be speaking Lakota in 20 years? In 30 years? In 40 years?” said Wilson. “Those are the things we’ve got to be thinking about espeially with the number dwindling. We have to step up our game as a generation we really need to get up there and take hold and we can’t just get by just knowing a few things.”

The event continued Sunday at 8 a.m. until 4 p.m.

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Lakota Language Weekend in Rapid City

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Natalie Morris | KOTA | October 5, 2019

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Lakota language instructor, teaches a class for the Lakota Language Weekend on October 5.

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Lakota Language Weekend is taking place Saturday and Sunday at Holiday Inn Rushmore Plaza. This is the second Lakota language weekend hosted in Rapid City this year.

Lakota is a considered by the United Nations to be a critically endangered language and event coordinator, Katie Norman, said there is an increasing amount of people who want to learn the language in surrounding communities.

Instructors at the event use total physical response methods to help teach the language.

The method utilizes animal props to visually help learn vocabulary used in every day activities.

“Each class focuses on Lakota grammar, in part, but also on communicative Lakota. In the mornings, teachers can either start off with grammar basics or jump right into what’s your name, how are you doing today,” said Norman.

Norman said the event is typically for high school students and older, but there are youth schools that teach Lakota language across the region.

She also said the event takes on a special importance because the United Nations declared 2019 the International Year of Indigenous Languages.

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‘Become a language warrior:’ Efforts to revive Lakota Language flourish in Dakotas

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Natasha Rausch & Chris Flynn | INFORUM | July 24, 2019

[/fusion_text][fusion_imageframe image_id=”11922|full” aspect_ratio=”” custom_aspect_ratio=”100″ aspect_ratio_position=”” skip_lazy_load=”” lightbox=”no” gallery_id=”” lightbox_image=”” lightbox_image_id=”” alt=”” link=”” linktarget=”_self” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” sticky_display=”normal,sticky” class=”” id=”” max_width=”” sticky_max_width=”” align_medium=”none” align_small=”none” align=”none” mask=”” custom_mask=”” mask_size=”” mask_custom_size=”” mask_position=”” mask_custom_position=”” mask_repeat=”” style_type=”” blur=”” stylecolor=”” hue=”” saturation=”” lightness=”” alpha=”” hover_type=”none” margin_top_medium=”” margin_right_medium=”” margin_bottom_medium=”” margin_left_medium=”” margin_top_small=”” margin_right_small=”” margin_bottom_small=”” margin_left_small=”” margin_top=”” margin_right=”” margin_bottom=”” margin_left=”” bordersize=”” bordercolor=”” borderradius=”” z_index=”” caption_style=”off” caption_align_medium=”none” caption_align_small=”none” caption_align=”none” caption_title=”” caption_text=”” caption_title_tag=”2″ fusion_font_family_caption_title_font=”” fusion_font_variant_caption_title_font=”” caption_title_size=”” caption_title_line_height=”” caption_title_letter_spacing=”” caption_title_transform=”” caption_title_color=”” caption_background_color=”” fusion_font_family_caption_text_font=”” fusion_font_variant_caption_text_font=”” caption_text_size=”” caption_text_line_height=”” caption_text_letter_spacing=”” caption_text_transform=”” caption_text_color=”” caption_border_color=”” caption_overlay_color=”” caption_margin_top=”” caption_margin_right=”” caption_margin_bottom=”” caption_margin_left=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_offset=”” filter_hue=”0″ filter_saturation=”100″ filter_brightness=”100″ filter_contrast=”100″ filter_invert=”0″ filter_sepia=”0″ filter_opacity=”100″ filter_blur=”0″ filter_hue_hover=”0″ filter_saturation_hover=”100″ filter_brightness_hover=”100″ filter_contrast_hover=”100″ filter_invert_hover=”0″ filter_sepia_hover=”0″ filter_opacity_hover=”100″ filter_blur_hover=”0″]https://lakhota.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/190724-becomingalanguage.jpg[/fusion_imageframe][fusion_text columns=”” column_min_width=”” column_spacing=”” rule_style=”” rule_size=”” rule_color=”” hue=”” saturation=”” lightness=”” alpha=”” content_alignment_medium=”” content_alignment_small=”” content_alignment=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” sticky_display=”normal,sticky” class=”” id=”” margin_top=”” margin_right=”” margin_bottom=”” margin_left=”” fusion_font_family_text_font=”” fusion_font_variant_text_font=”” font_size=”12″ line_height=”” letter_spacing=”” text_transform=”” text_color=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_offset=””]Students practice conversing in Lakota during Corey Yellow Boy’s Communicative Lakota for Beginners 1 class on July 9 at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. Chris Flynn / The Forum[/fusion_text][fusion_text columns=”” column_min_width=”” column_spacing=”” rule_style=”” rule_size=”” rule_color=”” hue=”” saturation=”” lightness=”” alpha=”” content_alignment_medium=”” content_alignment_small=”” content_alignment=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” sticky_display=”normal,sticky” class=”” id=”” margin_top=”” margin_right=”” margin_bottom=”” margin_left=”” fusion_font_family_text_font=”” fusion_font_variant_text_font=”” font_size=”” line_height=”” letter_spacing=”” text_transform=”” text_color=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_offset=””]GRAND FORKS — Laurel Vermillion never learned her native language at a young age.

She grew up on the South Dakota side of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, and her parents didn’t teach her Lakota/Dakota, which are two dialects of the same language.

Vermillion recalled her mom once explained why: “We were punished harshly for speaking our language, and we would get hit on the hands with rulers. We thought this was going to be the non-Native world. This was going to be the white man’s world, so we’re not going to really need our language.”

“Isn’t that sad?” Vermillion said. “But that’s reality. I don’t know my language. I don’t blame my parents because they did what they thought was right at that time.”

Now at age 64, Vermillion said she’s too old to grasp full fluency, but that’s not stopping her from helping the next generation of speakers to learn. Now as the president of Sitting Bull College in Fort Yates, North Dakota, Vermillion said the Lakota people are making headway in revitalizing the language.

Renewed interest

Through summer learning institutes, immersive language schools, new online resources and a growing interest among young Lakota and Dakota people, the language may be able to survive colonization and decades of federal assimilation policies.

The Bloomington, Indiana-based Lakota Language Consortium has helped set up three-week Lakota/Dakota language institutes across the Dakotas at the University of South Dakota, Sitting Bull College, and for the first time this summer, at the University of North Dakota.

The UND institute in Grand Forks that started early this month attracted both Native and non-Native students who could enroll in beginner, intermediate or teacher-level courses, according to Wil Meya, the executive director of the Lakota Language Consortium.

Meya said there is a “real urgency in the teaching of the Lakota language,” in part because the average age of fluent speakers is 65. Meya, who is also the chief executive officer of the Language Conservancy , a group dedicated to language preservation and revitalization, said the world used to boast 1.6 million languages, but in the last 50 years, 90 percent of those languages have become endangered or extinct, especially in the United States, Canada and Australia.

For Lakota, he said, the number of fluent speakers has been “in free fall” for the last 60 years as geopolitical factors like the end of World War II as well as the Indian Relocation Act of 1956 created a “perfect storm of issues” that affected indigenous languages.

Prior to that, the U.S. government adopted an Indian Boarding School Policy beginning in the mid-19th century, in which hundreds of thousands of indigenous children across the country were removed from their homes and placed in boarding schools operated by the federal government and churches, according to the Minneapolis-based National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.

Now, Lakota has just 1,500 speakers left, Meya said, and the ability to revitalize the language depends on the next generation.

“It really depends on them,” he said. “We try to encourage as many young people as possible to begin taking that on as part of their identity and part of their way of moving forward. Become a language warrior; fight for your language; try to preserve it.”

Surviving extinction

Thirty-seven-year-old Chad Ward of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Nation attended the institute in Grand Forks to start his journey to become a Lakota language teacher.

The Lakota language “is a big part of who you are,” said Ward, who is also the Native American liaison in the Grand Forks Public Schools. “If there’s no language, do you have a civilization?”

Vermillion said that was part of the ploy in the government’s efforts to push indigenous people off reservations and assimilate them. “We’ll just kill the language and then they can’t be a tribe anymore,” Vermillion said.

If the language ceased to exist, the tribe would, too, she said.

Meya said the Lakota language is one of the contenders for surviving extinction as young people seek to learn and tribal schools teach the language.

For the consortium’s part, the group now publishes more than 100 items in Lakota, from phone apps to dictionaries, so “there’s no excuse not to learn Lakota anymore,” Meya said.

The consortium also uses the Standard Lakota Orthography, better known as SLO, which gives learners a way to write and read the historically oral language. SLO uses what’s known as diacritical markers, or accents, that go on various letters to show how to pronounce or correctly emphasize a word.

“Without those diacritics, you may be inadvertently pronouncing words in an English way,” Meya said. “We want to make sure that both students and learners are able to preserve the integrity of the language and the accuracy of the language for generations to come.”

Dakota Goodhouse, a Native American studies professor at United Tribes Technical College and a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation, said SLO is a powerful tool because second-language learners can read, interpret and speak words the first time correctly.

But he said the language, which is descriptive by nature, used to be written in pictographs, instead of letters. And he pointed out that there are some words in the consortium’s dictionary that aren’t the same as in his tradition. For example, the dictionary’s word for the “solar eclipse” translates to “to cast shadow upon,” but Goodhouse found an 1868 calendar that dubbed a solar eclipse “cloud on fire.”

He added that traditionally, first-language speakers learned Lakota at their mother’s table.

“That’s how it should be,” he said. “Everyone should learn at their mother’s table in their mother’s home.” But for second-language learners who have a family history of being sent off to boarding schools, that wasn’t always an option, he said.

Laurel Vermillion said she’s supportive of people learning the language in all different ways and doing anything to help people learn.

Her granddaughter was enrolled at the language immersion nest in Standing Rock, in which teachers speak only in Lakota throughout the day to students as young as two-and-a-half years old.

Vermillion said her granddaughter is already becoming the better Lakota speaker, and one day, she even offered to say the meal prayer in Lakota.

“I was in tears because I don’t know my beautiful language,” Vermillion said. “I thought if my mom and dad could see her — their great-granddaughter speaking the language — they would be so happy.”[/fusion_text][fusion_separator style_type=”single solid” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” sticky_display=”normal,sticky” class=”” id=”” flex_grow=”0″ top_margin=”10px” bottom_margin=”10px” width=”” alignment=”left” border_size=”3px” sep_color=”#8b1b1f” hue=”” saturation=”” lightness=”” alpha=”” icon=”” icon_size=”” icon_color=”” icon_circle=”” icon_circle_color=”” /][fusion_button link=”https://lakhota.org/news/” title=”” target=”_self” link_attributes=”” alignment_medium=”” alignment_small=”” alignment=”” modal=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” sticky_display=”normal,sticky” class=”” id=”” color=”custom” button_gradient_top_color=”rgba(139,27,31,0)” hue=”” saturation=”” lightness=”” alpha=”” button_gradient_bottom_color=”rgba(139,27,31,0)” button_gradient_top_color_hover=”rgba(51,51,51,0)” button_gradient_bottom_color_hover=”rgba(51,51,51,0)” gradient_start_position=”” gradient_end_position=”” gradient_type=”” radial_direction=”” linear_angle=”180″ accent_color=”#000000″ accent_hover_color=”#000000″ type=”flat” bevel_color=”” bevel_color_hover=”” border_top=”” border_right=”” border_bottom=”” border_left=”” border_radius_top_left=”” border_radius_top_right=”” border_radius_bottom_right=”” border_radius_bottom_left=”” border_color=”” border_hover_color=”” size=”” padding_top=”” padding_right=”0″ padding_bottom=”” padding_left=”0″ fusion_font_family_button_font=”Inter” fusion_font_variant_button_font=”400″ font_size=”” line_height=”” letter_spacing=”” text_transform=”” stretch=”no” margin_top=”” margin_right=”” margin_bottom=”” margin_left=”” icon=”” icon_position=”left” icon_divider=”no” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_offset=””]<< Back to News[/fusion_button][/fusion_builder_column][fusion_global id=”11370″]
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Standing Rock institute passes Dakota, Lakota language from fluent elders to younger generation

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Natasha Rausch | The Jamestown Sun | July 5, 2019

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Denny Gayton teaches Lakota Dakota language speaking lab on Monday, June 24, at the Sitting Bull College in Fort Yates, North Dakota, on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Natasha Rausch / The Forum

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STANDING ROCK SIOUX RESERVATION — Sunshine Carlow is racing to build a generation of fluent Lakota and Dakota language speakers before it’s too late.

Carlow, 40, helped lead a three-week Dakota/Lakota Summer Institute at the Sitting Bull College in Fort Yates, N.D., on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

Her goal? To ensure the language is passed on from fluent elders to the next generation.

“We only have limited time with fluent speakers,” said Carlow, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. “We are working so that they know (the language) won’t be gone when they are.”

“Who is going to say our prayers?”

The language institute, in its 13th year, attracted about 130 people ranging from teenagers to adults seeking to learn the language in beginner, intermediate or advanced courses, Carlow said. She added that 20 instructors and 15 elders signed up to lead and assist in teaching the classes.

The institute, which lasted from June 10-28, is working to reinvigorate Dakota and Lakota — two dialects of the same language — after indigenous language learning skipped a generation as elders feared government-sanctioned repercussions of speaking in their native tongues.

Between 1869 and the 1960s, the U.S. government adopted an Indian Boarding School Policy with the express purpose to “Kill the Indian, Save the Man,” according to the Minneapolis-based National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. The group estimated hundreds of thousands of indigenous children across the country were removed from their homes and placed in boarding schools operated by the federal government and churches.

“There was a real survival reason we have elder speakers only and then a whole generation of non-speakers,” Carlow said. “The fear was that their children could be beaten, ridiculed, ostracized.”

But now, young adults are taking on the task of learning and teaching Dakota and Lakota.

Twenty-one-year-old Bobby Pourier and 20-year-old Chase Warren taught a beginner-level course during the morning session and took higher-level classes in the afternoon.

“Language is perhaps the most important thing going forward to remember as a people,” said Warren, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

They each had about a dozen students in their classes. Pourier, a member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, said within just two weeks, his class had learned so much more than he had anticipated.

“Because we are Lakota, we have a Lakota spirit and that spirit is fluent in our language,” Pourier said. “You just have to bring out that part of yourself.”

Elliot Bannister, a 27-year-old language specialist from England, said “even after a week of classes people are having fluent conversations in the lunch line.”

“Each day you’re building upon knowledge you’ve gained the day before,” he said. “That way you build up conversational competency, awareness of the culture, without it feeling overwhelming or that you’re never going to get it.”

The language institute at Sitting Bull College isn’t the only of its kind. Beginning July 8, the Lakota Language Consortium and the University of North Dakota are putting on a three-week program called the Lakota Summer Institute North. Six weeks earlier, the Consortium hosted the Lakota Summer Institute South at the Oglala Lakota College on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

For the institute at Sitting Bull College, the classes vary in teaching styles. Beginner levels start with teaching the basics, like students saying their names and ages. And it’s repetitive, so students can get used to forming the new words and sounds.

Meanwhile, Denny Gayton leads a speaking lab, in which he says a phrase and students reply or repeat what he says. Often, he discusses people’s clothing, where they purchased it and at what price.

Students are “speaking constantly throughout the day,” Carlow said. “They’re getting the rhythm of the language.”

Advanced courses include the language acquisition and methodology classes, which discuss the best ways to teach indigenous languages. One of the classes works to create new Lakota and Dakota words.

Sitting Bull College students received credit for a one-semester language class if they attended all three weeks of the institute. Attendees could also come for just one week to learn more about the language and culture.

“This is a world-class institute for wanting to speak this language,” Pourier said. “And it deserves that type of language around it.”

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