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.