The third week at LSI, on two different occasions, participants gathered to honor Lakota teachers and students.

Last year was a particularly difficult one, with the passing of many respected elders and powerful advocates of the Lakota language.

LSI teachers, organizers and staff wanted to honor Mr. Milton Brown Otter, former Standing Rock Sioux Tribe councilman, and Ms. Velia Salas, a vibrant Lakota language teacher. Both Velia and Milton had been involved with LSI since its inaugural year, and were an inspiration to many of our participants. On Tuesday, June 21, we held a ceremony in their honor.

In an interview with ICTMN, LSI attendee and Lead Lakota Language Activities instructor at the Lakota Language Nest in Sitting Bull College, Tipizin Tolman said, “Their passing reminded the community that we have a closing window of opportunity to do language revitalization and do it well, while our speakers and supporters are alive”.

The second ceremony of the week was less somber, as we celebrated the graduation of four students from Sitting Bull College.  Marilyn Circle Eagle, Emmanuel Red Bear and Courtney Yellow Fat were honored with a traditional eagle feather, a medicine wheel and their Sitting Bull College diplomas. The fourth graduate, Evelyn Goodhouse, was unfortunately not in attendance.

We congratulate the graduates!

This week, Linda Black Elk’s 3-week Ethnobotany course culminated in a mouthwateringly tasty potluck, all made with freshly picked ingredients and wild meat brought from home.

In fact, the during the whole third week Ethnobotany students did daily hands-on activities- making shampoo, lip balm and massage oil – all with the herbal ingredients they learned about throughout the week.

Many students were impressed with the class; LSI attendee Barb Dupris shared, “I’ve lived here my whole life, but I didn’t know what half of those plants were or how to recognize them.”

But it wasn’t only the students who were learning. Instructor Linda Black Elk commented, “I feel so thankful and blessed to have so many elders in my class this summer. I am learning so much from them and I hope they are learning a little from me.”

Linda was particularly excited to have Hazel Red Bird in her class.

“She is my sons’ grandmother. She hadn’t dug thíŋpsiŋla (Pediomelum esculentum; turnip) since she was a little girl of about 10 years old. Now she is 91. A few years ago, she made a bucket list. ‘Going out to dig thíŋpsiŋla‘ was on that list. I’m thrilled to say that we made that happen this week by taking her out on the hills behind Sitting Bull College and helping her dig her first thíŋpsiŋla in 80 years. It was very emotional for her and for all of us. She is a remarkable woman.” 

All LSI participants were invited to the potluck and were encouraged to learn about the ingredients used in the cooking.

At this year’s Lakota Summer Institute history was made with the first ever Lakota Poetry course, taught by Ben Black Bear and Lawrence Diggs.

While poetry as we know it today wasn’t prevalent in Lakota culture, many Lakota songs could be considered a form of poetry. The language itself is poetic and easily gives way to creating a new literary style.

The class explored different poetry styles in Lakota, all the while discovering new ways the language can be beautiful when we play with the sounds, nuanced meanings of words and unique Lakota expressions.

Additionally participants in the class worked on poetry reading and public speaking skills, including a focus on body language to help communicate their poetry. The class recorded to see how different every participant sounded to others in comparison to themselves.

Courtney Yellow Fat, long-time LSI participant and now teacher, shared: “Ever since I was a young man I have been interested in poetry, because it gave me an outlet to express my feelings. Poetry isn’t a new thing to the Lakota people, we have always had poetic expressions in our stories and especially in our songs. […]”

We’ll be putting together an album of recordings from this class, so stay tuned! In the meanwhile, check out this video on our Facebook page – Lakota Poetry class participants reading a poem all together. We hope that many new, creative possibilities for language learning will emerge in the future as the Lakota Summer Institute continues to blossom.

With every consecutive year, we have more and more attendees at LSI. We spoke with participants during week 2 & 3 to bring you a variety of impressions about this year’s training.

Manny Iron Hawk – Manny, an LSI veteran, has been attending the Institute every year since 2008! He used to teach grades 7-12 at a school in Eagle Butte and still gives presentations today. Manny admitted that when he first heard about the Institute, he was suspicious: “I was skeptical, but I wanted to come with an open mind, to come and see for myself and to participate in the classes.”
He shares that since that year he’s been eager to return every summer.

“I found out that this could really have impact with kids, especially all the Methods classes with engaging actives and games, as well as the spelling system and diacritics – I find it easier to read. I also come here to meet other language speakers, to speak, to socialize. That’s the way to keep our language going.”

Teachers like Manny are the heart & soul of LSI. “I tell young people interested in the language to come here and to check it out for themselves,” he said.

Barb Dupris – Barb is an 8th grade Lakota language & culture teacher at Eagle Butte Jr. High. This is Barb’s third, non-consecutive year at LSI; she was previously at the Institute in 2010 and 2015. “In 2010, I took my very first phonology class. That was very helpful because Lakota was my first language, but I got away from it for a while and wasn’t using it. The class reminded me about the sounds of the language.”

Barb shared that reading and writing were one of the strongest points about the Institute, “Fluent speakers have been speaking their whole life but don’t necessarily know how to read and write. Now I can read and write and I am getting more and more comfortable.”

Her favorite classes this year included Ethnobotany and Teaching Methods with Kim Campbell. “Kim is very knowledgeable,” Barb said, “There are a lot of activities and exercises that go along with the book. There is a whole different, engaging idea of teaching, of building up material and doing final review exercises.”

Barb also enjoyed the 3-week Ethnobotany course that was offered this year. “I’ve lived here my whole life, but I didn’t know what half of those plants were or how to recognize them.”  In week 3, Ethnobotany students did daily hands-on activities using the plants they gathered and picked throughout the week. Activities included making shampoo, lip balm, massage oil, and cooking a meal for a potluck at the end of the week. Check out this post for more information.

 Sammi Seidel – Sami is a lively high school student from Rapid City who came to LSI for the first time this year! She first heard about the Institute from her sister, Savannah, who attended LSI last year and has since been at a few of LLC’s Lakota Language Weekend events in South Dakota. Sammi has been taking a Lakota language class in Rapid every Tuesday, but she says that being at LSI for all 3 weeks has really improved her language skills.

“It gives me a better opportunity to learn the language. I like how everybody gets involved. We get together to do activities and I feel very welcome here.”

Sammi also shared that she felt very supported by her teachers in class, “I like that the teachers will teach the whole class but also help you one-on-one. They really reach out to every student and follow their progress.”

When we asked Sammi if she was planning on returning next year she said, “Definitely. It’s just a great experience and I’m so lucky to be here. If you want to learn Lakota, I would recommend coming here.”

Aŋpétu kiŋ lé okó ičínuŋpa kiŋ iháŋke kštó.

This week, LSI participants explored the richness of Lakȟótiyapi with courses like Intensive Lakota/Dakota for Elementary II, Neologism Development, Voice Performance & Audio Materials Development, Immersion Methods, Lakota/Dakota Inflectional Morphology II, and others! We caught up with some of our participants to see what they had to say about week 2.

Winona (“Nona”) Gayton – This is Winona’s second year taking classes at LSI, but she’s been hanging around the Institute since 2014. “My dad first brought me here, since he teaches. And after I saw how the Institute was set up, I wanted to come be a part of it.”

When we asked her what exactly drew her to the Institute, Winona said, “I like that the teachers understand that the language is such a high priority in our communities. I also like that everyone here is like family – we all know each other and look forward to seeing each other every year.”

And Nona’s favorite classes? Lakota Morphology and Lakota Grammar.

“The classes are challenging for me, so I am able to learn a lot from them. Datives, conditional clauses…it all sounds really scary, but it’s actually fun learning it!”

We’re looking forward to seeing this motivated 9th grader next year!

Don Grey Day – Don teaches Tribal Culture at Selfridge Public Schools (K-12), and incorporates Lakȟótiyapi into his teaching. He’s been coming to LSI since 2013 to learn effective teaching methods and to be around fluent speakers.

This week Don took Immersion Methods with François Fouquerel, “What I like most about it is that I am a second language learner and I am in a class with fluent speakers. I get to sit amongst them and take it all in.”

As it turns out, Don’s favorite part about LSI is similar to Winona’s – “The main thing I like is that I have established relationships with people here. I also like meeting new people, who are just starting to learn and are anxious, scared and excited all in one. I like encouraging the beginners. Never tell anybody that learning your own language is not useful!”

Social Highlight – Humor The Ruse & Scatter Their Own at LSI

The social highlight for this week was a performance by Humor the Ruse (top left) and Scatter Their Own (bottom left) in honor of LSI’s 10th Anniversary.

Humor The Ruse is a musical duo from Standing Rock. Members Bubbsy Luger and Charli Fool Bear blew the audience away with their musical talent and by singing in Lakota! Stay tuned to hear one of their songs – we’ll be posting a video on the LLC Facebook page.

Scatter Their Own is an Alter-Native rock duo from of Oglala Lakota ancestry from the Badlands of South Dakota. A real family effort, the duo Scotti Clifford (Guitarist and Vocalist) and Juliana Brown Eyes-Clifford (Bassist and Vocalist), are actually joined by Scotti’s teenage children – Welby June (16) on guitar and Wahpe Waste Win (14) on drums.

The group shared why they were excited to play at LSI:

“We are a Lakota family. For us, it is all about relationships. The more fire that we can share as a world community, the stronger our unity. The more language we can build within our own culture, and even outside our own culture, the better. The heartbeat of our culture is the language, and that’s why this is important to us.”

We encourage you to follow all of our LSI 2016 updates on our Facebook  and Twitter pages. Stay tuned for week 3 wrap-up and more interviews with participants!

LSI Photos Week 2 – Click Here!

Greetings from LSI!

The 10th year of our Institute has brought a multitude of new and returning Lakota language learners, totaling around 120 participants in all! This year we also welcomed special visitors from the Mohegan Tribe, the Three Affiliated Tribes, and Apsáalooke Nation, who traveled to the Institute to learn about the best-practice teaching methods that Indian Country is buzzing about. We are thankful for new visitors and thrilled to share our language revitalization strategies to get others excited about starting their preservation movements.

We’ve put together just a few of our favorite highlights from this week below. This week’s courses included Intensive Lakota/Dakota for Beginners, Lakota/Dakota Phonology, Lakota/Dakota Inflectional Morphology, Lakota Song & Dance, Ethnobotany & Plant Identification, Teaching Lakota/Dakota Methods, Lakota/Dakota Grammar, and more!

Opening Ceremony:

Many words of encouragement were shared at the Opening Ceremony. Standing Rock Chairman Dave Archambault and SRST Council Members extended a warm welcome to all participants of this special year – the 10th Anniversary of LSI. SRST Tribal Education Manager and LSI Coordinator Sunshine Archambault-Carlow spoke about the goals for preservation and maintenance of Lakȟótiyapi, what impact the Summer Institute has for future generations, and where we want to be in 100 years. She remarked how intense these three weeks can be, but that all the hard work is worth it!

Lakota Song & Dance:

The Lakota/Dakota Song & Dance class, led by elder Ben Black Bear, was small but covered many songs and dances, including the Omaha Dance, Rabbit Dance, Round Dance, Sneak-up dance, Kit fox Society Dance, Strong Heart Society Dance and Song, Honoring Penny Songs and Dances, and Victory Dance.

Additionally, the group watched videos demonstrating all of the different dances and listened to songs associated with Night Dances and Love Song Dances, while studying some of their lyrics.

“They are poetic expressions and the students found them very interesting to hear them, write them down, and learn about what they mean. But, one week is not enough time to cover everything that we wanted to talk about! Another Lakota Song and Dance class is scheduled for next week in the evenings,” Ben reassured us.

Lakota/Dakota Grammar &
Intensive Lakota/Dakota for Intermediates:

Students in Jan Ullrich’s classes have dived into the depths of Lakota and Dakota Grammar! Participants have been gathering a wealth of knowledge about verb conjugation patterns, syntactic structure and grammar rules within the context of everyday conversation and traditional narratives. Jan shared, “Many of the students in my classes have made tremendous progress in their learning, so that is very encouraging.”

Hand Games, Pottery and more! 

LSI participants study hard during the day…but in their off hours they like to have fun too! This week in the evenings, many of our participants participated in Hand Games tournaments or took a Mandan/Hidatsa pottery class at the Sitting Bull Visitor Center, where they could make something with local Standing Rock clay.

LDL 210 – Lakota/Dakota Inflectional Morphology Instructor Denny Gayton also announced an upcoming Adult Language Competition, which will kick off this Sunday, June 12th with a practice competition.

We encourage you to follow all of our LSI 2016 updates on our Facebook  and Twitter pages. Stay tuned for announcements for week 2, including details about upcoming events and a performance by Scatter Their Own!

LSI 2016 Photos for Week 1 – Click Here!

Have you heard about the Lakota Grammar Handbook, due to arrive in Fall 2016?

The Grammar is a 600-page self-study and reference pedagogical guide to the language. It is based exclusively on data obtained from authentic narratives recorded by native speaking elders across Lakota country. With over 220 units, 7273 example sentences and 11613 practice sentences full of culturally relevant content, this book is the most comprehensive Lakota learning resource to date, giving its reader the power to use the language accurately and with more confidence.

Last month, elder, teacher and first language-speaker Ben Black Bear stopped by our headquarters to work on the Grammar. Ben has been vital in providing the voice recording for this project, having already spent 50 hours in the recording studio! He has also proofread the Grammar, to ensure that the words included are those actually used in idiomatic Lakota speech and that they are correctly used and written. You can look forward to over 10,000 practice sentences taken from conversations between native speakers. In this way, not only is there grammatical accuracy, but important contextual and cultural relevancy to your Lakota-language learning.

During this year’s Lakota Summer Institute, students in Jan Ullrich’s classes got a first look at the Grammar; participants in the Lakota/Dakota Inflectional Morphology II course worked with excerpts of the Grammar to explain causative verbs to their classmates.

The Lakota Grammar Handbook is scheduled for release this fall, but in the future, Lakota learners of all levels also have a multimedia version of the Grammar to look forward to! Students will be able to complete interactive computer exercises such as translating dialogues, selecting correct verb forms, and completing fill-in-the-blank sentences. Exciting new features will include the ability for users to click on a sentence and hear it read by a native Lakota speaker.

Watch llcbookstore.com this fall for its release!

If you’ve been keeping up with the LLC and its partners, you already know that in our mission to revitalize Lakota, we provide critical infrastructural support to tribal education departments, schools, and work to increase public awareness on the crisis of disappearing languages. As part of this mission, we’re also working on strengthening our cultural partnerships, given that cultural activities, history and tradition are essential to successful language revitalization programs.

Beginning this year, the Lakota Language Consortium and our sister organization The Language Conservancy will work closer with Kevin Locke and other Lakota performers to bring the broader public many co-branded events! Mr. Locke, world-renowned educator, plains flute player and hoop dancer, has been a Board Member for the Lakota Language Consortium since its conception in 2004. He has actively moved Lakota language revitalization initiatives forward through his teaching, public speaking as well as flute-playing (check out this post on the LLC blog about the revival of the Lakota flute from 2013 ).

In Mr. Locke’s latest project, five years in the making – Lightning & Wind – he collaborated with Douglas Good Feather to create an album straight from the heart of Lakota culture. This album celebrates love in all its joys and woes through a genre of song called wiílowaŋ (“serenades” or “songs of women”). Lightning & Wind brings together archival recordings of some of the last keepers of these songs with masterful flute work by Kevin Locke and contemporary vocals by Douglas Good Feather. Wiílowaŋ flourished in the pre-reservation period when they were taught as part of the art of traditional subsistence. Although the social context that gave rise to wiílowaŋ has disappeared, their entertainment value has persevered, and the emotions they sing of are timeless gifts of the Plains. The album is available for download on CD Baby.

This weekend, Mr. Locke will be performing for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in celebration of the Annual Children’s Festival (details here). If you are in New York, we encourage you and your family to come out and celebrate Lakota culture with Mr. Locke!

To learn more about Mr. Locke’s work, visit https://kevinlocke.com/ and follow the latest updates about events by liking his Facebook page.

The TLC team is looking forward to working closely with Mr. Locke and his team to bring new and exciting events. To book Kevin Locke as an educational speaker or performer, please contact Eddie Santos:

Voice: 605-646-3993

Text: 949.923.5059

eddie@kevinlocke.com

Did you know that April is National Poetry Month? This holiday was first introduced 20 years ago by the Academy of American Poets to raise awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States. To highlight this holiday, we wanted to shine a spotlight on Lightning  & Wind –  what better way to acknowledge the importance of poetry than through beautiful Lakota traditional songs?  This album celebrates love in all its joys and woes through a genre of song called wiílowaŋ (“serenades” or “songs of women”). Lightning & Wind brings together archival recordings of some of the last keepers of these songs with masterful flute work by Kevin Locke and contemporary vocals by Douglas Good Feather.

Wiílowaŋ flourished in the context of the pre-reservation social structure in which the genders were separated upon adolescence in order that they could concentrate on mastering all of the traditional subsistence skills required. Once these skills were mastered, the young men and women were eligible for marriage. Wiílowaŋ in both vocal and instrumental forms developed as a means of bridging the inter gender communication gap. At one time wiílowaŋ were commonplace and everyone was familiar with this genre, so much so that a specialized vocabulary arose to describe the subtle nuances expressed: wióište olówaŋ (embarrasment song), wikúŋ olówaŋ (coveting song), wióyuspa olówaŋ (capturing song), wiínaȟma olówaŋ (secretive song), and so on. The full range of human emotions, tragedy and humor are portrayed through the medium of wiílowaŋ.

These songs originate from the Elk Dreamer Society. This group was responsible for making songs for people who needed to say something in music and dance. They also made flutes, and put on feasts and dance performances to keep the music flowing and developing throughout the culture. When the Elk appeared in your dreams, that was the sign that your gift to the people would be music and dance.

Serenading songs follow a formula, like a haiku. The opening phrase is repeated three times at the beginning – an incomplete thought, something that gets the listener wondering what this is about. Then the next phrase gives substance and illuminates the meaning of the first phrase. The first part of the song is structurally quite different from the second part.  It changes substantively unlike any other genre of indigenous music.

Below we have included lyrics, in Lakota and English, to the ninth song on the album – Tȟéhaŋ Níŋ Kte “You are going to go far away”. Follow along by reading the lyrics and listening to the song on YouTube.

Tȟéhaŋ Níŋ Kte

Tȟéhaŋ níŋ kte.

Iyókiphi-mayayiŋ naháŋ tȟéhaŋ níŋ kte.

Makȟá tȟéhaŋ yaúŋ kte so?

Apȟé čhiúŋ kte.

—

You are going to go far away.

You made me happy and now you are going far away.

Are you going to stay in a distant land?

I will wait for you.

Even though the social context giving rise to wiílowaŋ disappeared during the early reservation period its entertainment value persevered well into the 20th century. The album is available for download on CD Baby and you can stream it in full on YouTube: