Category: Blog Post

Week Two! Section Two! Here we go again …

Coming up this week, Teaching Lakota/Dakota II, more Language Intensives, and the return of Northern Plains Sign Language, with Dr. Lanny Real Bird of the Crow Nation. Dr. Real Bird brings back instruction in nearly 200 hand signs that were the common language between many, many tribes in the pre-reservation era.

It seems that language itself is bringing together Northern Plains tribes these days. With the emergence of language education and revitalization efforts in the Crow, MHA and other Plains nations, one can see the rising point of view that all tribes are in the same situation when it comes to their languages: it’s time to start learning, so that they won’t be lost.

The MHA and Crow Nations finished their first Summer Institutes on Friday, inaugurating language education and revitalization programs based on carefully planned K-12 curricula and proven second-language education methods.  The MHASI will relocate to Fort Berthold Community College in 2015. Their kickoff at Sitting Bull College, coinciding with LSI, was facilitated by the Language Conservancy,  with support from Sitting Bull and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

The Crow and MHA Nations were formally welcomed and acknowledged in the Lakota Summer Institute opening ceremony last Monday, which established an atmosphere of respect and safety, as well as what LLC Executive Director Will Meya said was “hope, energy and enthusiasm that is really contagious.” Both Nations’ Institutes provided the attending teachers with brand-new Level 1 textbooks that sparked a leap in energy and focus.

Meya noted that it can get very lonely for severely endangered languages like Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara, whose teachers and remaining speakers have done their best to keep the languages available to the tribes.  Inclusion in a large, positive crowd of teachers and staff at Sitting Bull “was so new, and unlike what they’re used to, they could see right away why it’s so important to come down” to Fort Yates, Meya said.  The opportunity to dive deep into language study and practice was unusual and appreciated, he said.

#LSI2014 #SittingBullCollege #StandingRockSiouxTribe #EndangeredLanguages #LakotaLanguage

The energy of the young people at LSI keeps the elders on their toes!

It’s clear the long, hard work of the elders has paved the way for this wave of younger students …

…  and the elders’ enthusiasm keeps them moving forward.

Today, Friday, is the end of Section 1 for the intensive language study classes.  And that means tests!

Next Friday, of course, is going to be something special! Everyone is supercharged about the news of President Obama’s visit to the powwow on Standing Rock on June 13th. Classes will let out early so everyone can go welcome him and the First Lady. https://youtu.be/gK1dr0ylvwE

Until then – more learning!  It’s a real workout.

The Lakota Summer Institute and Lakota Language Consortium are proud to announce distinguished theater professional Steve Elm will direct a new play this summer as the culmination of the annual Lakota Summer Institute – a play that will be performed entirely in the Lakota language.

“Language, to me, is the key to theater,” says Steve Elm, who is the former Artistic Director of Amerinda Theater in New York City, and former Editor of the literary journal Talking Stick Native Quarterly. “I became an actor when I learned to love language.  I became a writer because I wanted to create language. I became a director so that I may translate language.”

Elm, who is Oneida, faces a language challenge this summer that is different from anything he’s ever done before: directing Lakota language teachers – non-actors — in Lakota, a language Elm does not speak.

Iktómi Lečhála Tȟawíčutȟuŋ (Iktomi’s New Wife) is a stage adaptation of two Lakota-Dakota tales about the trickster Iktomi: “Iktomi and the Ignorant Girl” and “Iktomi’s Blanket.” In the play, Iktomi has another fight with his old wife and he is determined to get a new one – and he will put on a dress to do it.

The language teachers who will rehearse and perform the play under Elm’s direction are fluent and proficient Lakota speakers from tribal school systems in North and South Dakota, as well as advanced language students. They are co-creating this production with improvisation and music under Elm’s guidance, while attending a special three-week class at LSI, Lakota Drama and Performance.

Other tribal colleges in the region, most notably Oglala Lakota College, have theater and drama courses to express Lakota identity with the language, but the LSI class intends to help Lakota language teachers build theater skills for use in their classrooms, to make learning and speaking Lakota exciting and fun.

Elm comes to the production with a background in professional acting, directing and playwriting, as well as educational theater development and teacher training. Trained at London’s Rose Bruford College and with professional credits in London and Manchester, Elm has performed and directed extensively for original Native American productions as part of festivals and for established Native American performance companies. With Gloria Miguel of Spiderwoman Theater, he co wrote her solo piece, Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue, which he directed at New York Theater Workshop La Mama, ETC., and the Freed Center in Ada, Ohio.

“I have a passion for working with young people and non-professionals,” he says. “In the 1990’s I directed the New York City based American Indian Community House Youth Theater Project. There, a company of young Natives collaborated through improvisation, games, storytelling and discussion to create theater that resonated with their lives and had a profound effect on the community and served to educate and familiarize non-Natives with contemporary Indian youth. The plays were often raucous, often musical, usually funny, and always poignant. Most importantly, the plays were created by the young people themselves. My role was to guide, facilitate, and stage.

“I worked for many years with the Creative Arts Team at City University of New York, where I specialized in creating drama in education; again, focusing on the issues and concerns of young people. These theater experiences provided a forum in which the participants interacted with the performers by taking roles in scenes, suggesting different ways in which characters could behave, commenting and discussing the action. The line between performers and students was erased; thus providing deeply student centered learning, as well as offering those involved a chance to be immersed in theater and drama.”

Currently, he is a freelance director and a Master Teacher at the Wolf Trap Institute for the Performing Arts, working with early learners and training teachers in drama and storytelling.  In September Steve will join the New School of Northern Virginia as Director of Theater.

Elm sees the opportunity to work with Lakota language teachers, who will be acting in a language he doesn’t understand, “an honor and a challenge.”

 

During the three-week Lakota Summer Institute, June 2-20, LLC will send out daily briefs on the activities, people, and surprises of our annual teacher training / community get-together.

Emphasize “brief” – we’ll keep it cool, with pictures and captions and short updates.

It’s part of LLC’s new social media experiment – we’ve gathered tools like WordPress, MailChimp and SproutSocial, to coordinate our electronic contact with you.

The blitz is just for one month, to share a fun and exciting event with you in new ways.  We hope you’ll share it, too, with your friends who wonder what this Lakota language thing is all about.

When the dust settles, we’ll be back to our previous rhythm – with more and richer content, more sharing between members of our community, more information about language and learning.

Next year, come join us at LSI – and see where it’s all coming from!

Today marks the 10^th anniversary of LLC’s founding – and the beginning of a historic change for the better in the story of the Lakota language.  In May 2004, LLC launched with a small Board, affiliation with just one tribe and 15 Lakota and non-tribal schools ready to participate in a comprehensive, unified language revitalization plan.

Today, LLC’s curriculum is taught at more than 80 schools for five tribes, and reaches more than 24,000 students – not counting the individual learners who pick up the textbooks, CDs and New Lakota Dictionary for self-study.  After a decade of hard, hard work building relationships and watching Lakota language learning take off, LLC staff and Board can verify that:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.  – -Margaret Mead

We are proud to count you among that group of committed citizens – language activists and caring supporters!

We have seen language activism stand up and take off running far beyond our own work – and that is a rare satisfaction.  The Lakota-Dakota Language Summit and the learner’s pages on Facebook prove that there is a demand for places where learners can gather and practice the language together.

It’s been a fantastic journey, a decade of startling growth, and we hope for many more. Here are some highlights of the past 10 years:

• 2004 – LLC is founded; Level 1 textbook is published.
• 2005 – Level 2 Textbook is published.
• 2006 – Lakota Summer Institute begins annual meetings at Sitting Bull College, with 18 participating teachers.
• 2007 – Assessment testing begins.
• 2008 – First Edition of the New Lakota Dictionary is published; Online Dictionary and Learner’s Forum is launched.
• 2009 – LLC wins Ken Hale Prize for grassroots language preservation work; New Lakota Dictionary wins Independent Publisher’s Association honor for Reference Publishing.
• 2010 – Level 3 textbook published.
• 2011 – The Lakota-language Berenstain Bears cartoons are produced and broadcast; Lakota Language Education Action Program (LLEAP) gets federal funding for two degree programs; Florentine Films/Hott Productions signs to produce & direct Rising Voices/ Hótȟaŋiŋpi, a documentary film about Lakota language revitalization; the Second Edition of the New Lakota Dictionary is published with 3,000 more words.
• 2012 – Level 4 textbook is published; LLEAP courses in teaching Lakota as a second language begin at Sitting Bull College and the University of South Dakota.
• 2013 – LSI attendance tops 100; audio files are recorded for the online Dictionary; LLC textbooks become the template for other Plains Tribes’ language education movements;  Rising Voices/ Hótȟaŋiŋpi awarded major funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
• 2014 – Level 5 textbook published; Lakota Audio Series published.

And this isn’t even mentioning the children’s picture books, the font bundle or the “Iktomi” plays!

Looking ahead to the next 10 years, LLC is already developing a Lakota Handbook as a complete, advanced grammar reference.   More apps, more audio-enhancement for the NLD, more Berenstain Bears episodes want to be translated and dubbed, and Rising Voices/ Hótȟaŋiŋpi will be finished and broadcast on PBS. And the first LLEAP graduates will be ready to start teaching!

So stay on board with us, the ride is just beginning!

The Dakota Language Society – better known as Dakhóta Iápi Okhódakičhiye (or DIO) – has let us know that their first Textbook, first Audio CD and first set of Posters are doing “tons” of pre-orders at their new web site store!

The DIO’s web site has information on the status of the Dakota language, including history of the written language, which originated with missionaries who believed that literacy was the key to Christianity. “In the 19th century Dakota people became literate in their language and wrote letters to each other,” this section tells. “Two Dakota newspapers were published in the Dakota language, along with readers, the bible, and a hymnal.”

DIO coordinates “Dakota Language Tables” for informal group study around the Twin Cities area. DIO estimates that there are about 28 fluent Dakota speakers left – 8 in Minnesota, and 20 in other states, including South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska and Montana.

Dakota and Lakota are so closely related, Dakota words and variations are included in both editions of the New Lakota Dictionary.

LLC Executive Director Wil Meya calls this launch by DIO “an important step because it expands what is already happening for language revitalization in the Plains region – it enlarges the speech community.”

We are proud to pass on the news of our Dakota friends’ exciting advance in their language revitalization work – and we wish them all the best with their new K-12 classroom materials!

Two new Native American language institutes will get off the ground in June 2014, running concurrently with the Lakota Summer Institute at Sitting Bull College.  Like LSI, both are focused on teacher training for second-language education with new textbooks for their respective languages, and on advanced language study for teachers and non-teachers alike.

The Crow Summer Institute will take place June 2-13.  The Mandan–Hidatsa–Arikara (MHA) Summer Institute will take place June 2- 6.  It will be an extension summer session of Fort Berthold Community College in Fort Berthold, ND.  MHASI will move permanently to FBCC in 2015.

Each of these Nations has begun their own coordinated language revitalization effort, inspired by the Lakota model. Crow language teachers came to LSI in 2013 for an introduction to Total Physical Response teaching methods, applied to their new Level 1 textbook. They will be returning for continued study of Total Physical Response and also Crow Phonology.

The MHA Nation aims to revitalize three languages, all of which are highly endangered. While Hidatsa has several speakers still living, while Mandan is down to just one living speaker, and Arikara has none. The MHA Nation Education Department will introduce a Level 1 textbook and phonology course for each language at their Institute.

These tribes are working with  LLC’s sister organization, the Language Conservancy,  to establish best practices for language revitalization, which includes setting up the kind of community-building teacher training institutes that LSI has become known for.

It is still not to late to register for LSI — the deadline has been extended to May 30.

Great news — hotel room rates have been lowered at the Prairie Knights Casino Hotel for attendees of the Lakota Summer Institute! The previous $70/night rate has dropped to $50/night.

Plus, Sitting Bull College has opened up its dormitories for $10/night during LSI, Sunday June 1 to Saturday, Jun 21.

So you can still register here to attend LSI!  Don’t let the cost of a bed keep you away.

 

The 2014 Lakota Summer Institute is just 4 weeks away!  Have you registered yet?

This three-week immersion in Lakota culture and thought is widely known as a rigorous “boot camp” experience in language study – but it has grown to embrace a wide range of learning experiences that go beyond the classroom, and connect you with other ways the language can come alive in your life.

 

Are you coming to LSI to learn Lakota?

LSI offers four tracks of Intensive study courses:

Intensive Lakota/Dakota for Beginners I – III

Intensive Lakota/Dakota for Pre-Intermediates I – III

Intensive Lakota/Dakota for Intermediates I – III

Intensive Lakota/Dakota for Advanced-Intermediates I – III

The aim of the Intensive coursework is to provide you with a large amount of exposure to the language and to work on all four language skills (reading, writing, listening comprehension, speaking). You will come away equipped with tons of new Lakota skills and knowledge.

 

Are you coming to LSI to improve your language teaching skills?

The new Level 5 Textbook will be introduced to teachers this year, along with introductions to Levels 1-4 in these courses:

Teaching Lakota/Dakota Level 1 Methods

Teaching Lakota/Dakota Level 2 Methods

Teaching Lakota/Dakota Level 3 Methods

Teaching Lakota/Dakota Level 4 Methods

Teaching Lakota/Dakota Level 5 Methods

If you want a refresher on teaching earlier Levels, these intensives are for you:

Teaching Lakota/Dakota Level 1&2 Methods, A-C

Teaching Lakota/Dakota Level 3&4 Methods, A-C

These refreshers emphasize teaching reading skills, grammar and vocabulary through props, flashcards and Total Physical Response methods; and teaching conversational skills through small-group activities. All work addresses specific units in each textbook. You will also tackle classroom management and how to change up your teaching for different learning styles.

 

Are you coming to LSI to deepen your understanding of the language from the inside out?

If you want to teach, speak, read or write Lakota with a deeper understanding of the language, here’s your “boot camp” coursework:

Lakota/Dakota Phonology I – III

Teaching Lakota/Dakota Grammar I – III

 

 Are you coming to LSI as an advanced speaker of Lakota?

Languages change, shift meanings, create new words and forget old ones. How does this happen, and why?

Neologism Development I – III

Led by fluent first-language elder Ben Black Bear, Jr., these three classes allow  YOU to help shape how Lakota will be changing in the future!  Yes, you have a role to play in the growth of Lakota.

Remember the fun of watching Iktomi play his tricks on stage two years ago?

[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz8-RXxOwwA&list=UUF1xIAKeXcBDTLlSxUOAw6w[/youtube]

He’s back! And the new play needs actors!

Lakota/Dakota Drama/Performance I – III

Iktómi Lečhála Tȟawíčutȟuŋ (Iktomi’s New Wife) is a stage adaptation of two Lakota-Dakota tales about the trickster Iktomi: “Iktomi and the Ignorant Girl” and “Iktomi’s Blanket.” In the play, Iktomi has another fight with his old wife and he is determined to get a new one – and he will put on a dress to do it.

LSI is proud to announce Steve Elm as the director and teacher of this course. Elm (Oneida) comes to the production with a background in professional acting, directing and playwriting, as well as educational theater development and teacher training. Elm has performed and directed extensively for original Native American productions as part of festivals and for established Native American performance companies. He has taken up the challenge of working in a language he does not speak, and will guide the participants in improvisation that makes the spoken Lakota lines completely organic and expressive.

 

Are you coming to LSI looking for something completely different?

LSI helps you learn Lakota without taking a language course. These courses develop your language skills through cultural immersion.

Northern Plains Sign Language

Teaching Traditional Lakota Flute

Braintanning in Lakota

Dr. Lanny Real Bird returns with his presentation of nearly 200 hand signs that the Northern Plains Tribes used to communicate with one another; Kevin Locke and Richard Dubé are back with the completed lesson book for the traditional flute; and you can learn traditional hide-tanning in a course conducted entirely in Lakota.

 

As if all that wasn’t enough …

When you come to the 2014 LSI, you can also get an introduction to four other Plains languages: Crow, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara.  These tribes are starting their own educational push to language revitalization with teacher training events that are supported by Sitting Bull College this year, and will move out to the individual communities’ tribal colleges next year.

Are you here yet? We’ll be happy to see you!

We’re shipping! The most advanced Lakota language textbook ever published is moving out of LLC offices now.   Lakȟótiya Wóglaka Po! Speak Lakota! Level 5 is the turning point for Lakota language education, something LLC’s founding Board and leaders have envisioned since 2004 — when mastered, these lessons establish the student as a proficient speaker, able to initiate and hold original conversations in the language, with correct grammar and male-female word usage.

First recipients are the schools, stores and individuals who set up pre-orders ahead of time.  The Textbook can be ordered through the LLC Bookstore.

The Level 5 textbook breaks from the previous textbooks’ design in two important ways.  First, there is no accompanying Audio CD – students are expected to have a good grasp of pronunciation, vocabulary and verb forms already.

Second, the Level 5 textbook creates a storyline that puts modern Lakota teens into the life of a pre-reservation camp.  The modern teens find they can form friendships and contribute to the life of the traditional camp because they can speak Lakota.  The lesson units derive from this storyline.

The Level 5 will be introduced to Lakota language teachers at the 2014 Lakota Summer Institute, June 2-20, at Sitting Bull College in Fort Yates, ND, in partnership with the  Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The teachers will go through all of the book’s units and practice-teach with their colleagues, using the Total Physical Response method of second-language education.

From here on out, Lakȟótiya Wóglaka Po! Speak Lakota! textbooks will contain more Lakota than English, and will lean on the in-depth grammar study that will soon be available in the Lakota Language  Handbook in progress at LLC.