The latest news, upcoming events, and new materials from Lakota Language Consortium.

News & Recent Events

Lakota Summer Institute Recap

Last month we spent 2 weeks immersed in Lakota Language with over 50 passionate Lakota Summer Institute participants. We were happy to see both the new and familiar faces of the Lakota language learners. Learners spent their time engaged in communicative (conversational) Lakota and Lakota grammar through zoom. Participants had the option to join the beginner or pre-intermediate tracks based on their Lakota language experience. We laughed, learned, and grew deeper into our Lakota language journeys and we are incredibly thankful. We would like to send a big wóphila to the 2022 LSI participants as well as our instructors Allen Wilson, Jan Ullrich, Kimberlee Campbell, Shania Black Bear-Searby, and Marek Kupiec.

Learning Lakota as a second language is difficult and the world doesn’t stop for us. We want to recognize those that were able to attend for sharing this time and space with us. We would also like to acknowledge those who had prior commitments and still make the effort to be in the language each day. It takes community building and the passion of each and every person to bring Lakota to the forefront of our daily experience. We feel reinvigorated and look forward to the next one. For now tókša akhé waŋčhíyaŋkiŋ kte!

LLC Board Update

Lakota Language Consortium Board 
(Top left to right)  Kevin Locke, Šišókaduta, Travis Condon, Jan Ullrich, and Wil Meya
(Bottom left to right) Richard Two Dogs and Ben Black Bear Jr.
(Tipiziwin Tolman and Iris Eagle Chasing not pictured, were unable to attend in person) 

Last month the LLC board met up in the beautiful Pahá Sápa for 2 days to review LLC’s past year and to plan for the year ahead. There are several projects and events planned for the upcoming year that we are excited to share with you when we can! One of the important aspects that the board discussed is recognizing the various people involved in maintaining the Lakota language. They have committed to sharing their language journeys and in turn, are inviting others to share what learning the language looks like for each person. We will be adding a section in our newsletter to share what positive language projects our board is participating in. To kick off this month we would like to recognize two of our LLC board members Iris Eagle Chasing and Tipiziwin Tolman! 

Read more about our Board Members here.

Tipiziwin Tolman:
Tipiziwin will be featured on our social media pages to share the Back to School theme of the month as well as the weekly Motivational Phrases! These clips highlighting our themes will be available each week to bring more opportunities to engage in the language on a familiar platform.
If you have been a long-time follower of the newsletter and social media you may remember Tipiziwin being featured on our page in the past. She did an interview with LLC to talk about her presentations at the Tusweca Language Summit. Tipiziwin shares from her heart and has a deep passion and love for the language. It is very exciting to have her back on the page and we hope you enjoy hearing one of the many voices of Lakota Language! 

Iris Eagle Chasing:
Iris has been teaching at Takini School for the past 14 years and was recently in CGTN America’s Video talking about Lakota Language with teachers from the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. She reminds us why it’s important to invest our time in learning our language and provides a serious look into the realities of Lakota language use.
It is her passion for language that has her voice in several of our most commonly used language resources. Iris is featured in the Lakota Bernstein Bears series as Mama Bear, the female voice in the NLD, as well as the Audio Series. Her worries have been turned into action and she remains one of the people at the forefront of pushing back again language loss. We are very honored to be working alongside Iris. 

NLD Mobile Beta – Testing Soon!

We’ve reached another milestone that brings us closer to the release of the NLD 3.0. Woohoo! The NLD has officially begun beta testing on iOS (Apple) platforms. 

The teams, teachers, and learners at LSI have been involved in the beta testing are making sure the NLD is running smoothly. Over 400 native speakers have used their knowledge and wisdom to create one of the most accurate and up-to-date learning tools for Lakota language. The collaboration resulted in a total of 40,838-Lakota word entries and 53,000 example sentences. The NLD makes those elders’ contributions accessible and opens up more opportunities for second language learners to have conversations using the language.

Once we are ready for more beta testers, we will send an email asking for volunteers!

Tókša akhé  – the LLC Team

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