Lakota Language Consortium Seeks Lawsuit Dismissal and Better Relationship with Standing Rock Tribal Council
The Lakota Language Consortium (“LLC”), on May 15, 2026, defended itself and the right of individual tribal members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to sell or license their personal property without permission from Tribal Council.
“If the Tribe is saying that it owns every intangible cultural resource that tribal members ever make on the Reservation, then a lot of beneficial cultural activity would now be illegal. It would be illegal to write and sell books of knowledge my grandparents shared with me.”
Sacheen Whitetail Cross
In a Motion to Dismiss filed by the LLC in Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Court, the nonprofit education entity, 100% run by Lakota/Dakota tribal member board of directors, asked the Tribal Court to throw out the case brought by the Tribal Council last August.
Most of the lawsuit relies on breach-of-contract claims that the LLC denies, and also are now too old to be litigated—they fall outside of the Tribe’s six-year statute of limitations.
The Tribal Council also accused the LLC of violating the Tribe’s Cultural Resource Code of 2015—before the Cultural Resource Code was even enacted. The LLC asked the Court to throw those claims out as well, given that nothing in the Cultural Resource Code gives the law retroactive effect.
Finally, the LLC asked the Court to dismiss the remaining allegations under the Cultural Resource Code because the Court should not interpret the tribal law to apply to intangible cultural resources created by individual tribal members on the Reservation, such as recordings of storytelling, recordings of interviews, recordings of songs or other performances, movies and videos, and written works like books, articles, and blogs, unless these works are otherwise owned by the Tribe.
Between 2007 and 2016, the LLC entered agreements with fluent Lakota speakers to sit for recorded interviews, storytelling, and language explanations. Each speaker was either paid, or they were offered payment and declined. In any case, each speaker understood and supported the mission of the LLC and each speaker gave informed consent to the use of the recordings in the LLC’s educational endeavors.
In its lawsuit, however, Tribal Council claims that the transactions between the LLC and the individual tribal members were in violation of the Cultural Resource Code. According to the Tribal Council’s legal theory, the Tribe—not the individual tribal members—became the owner of the speakers’ recordings as soon as they were created on the Reservation, and without the Tribal Council’s permission, the transactions violated tribal law.
“That’s wild,” said Sacheen Whitetail Cross, the Executive Director of the LLC and herself a Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Member. “If the Tribe is saying that it owns every intangible cultural resource that tribal members ever make on the Reservation, then a lot of beneficial cultural activity would now be illegal. It would be illegal to write and sell books of knowledge my grandparents shared with me. It would be illegal to sell photographs and paintings of reservation landscapes. It would be illegal to sell traditional music.”
The LLC’s attorneys, Leroy (“JR”) LaPlante of Sioux Falls and Jeffrey Nelson of mctlaw in Washington, DC, say not to worry. “The Tribe’s Cultural Resource Code can be interpreted to apply only to intellectual property that the Tribe already owns,” said Mr. Nelson. “That way, it would not make every cultural item produced by tribal members subject to its restrictions, but at the same time, it would be very protective of tribal cultural resources.”
“Under this interpretation of the tribal code,” said Mr. LaPlante, “the individual Lakota speakers had ownership of their own recorded interviews and storytelling, and they voluntarily contributed their skills and knowledge without a vote of Tribal Council. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, that’s why we are asking for this case to be dismissed. It would end the legal fighting and restore community-led approaches to language revitalization.”
Inquiries may be directed to info@lakhota.org
