Immersion education is recognized as the most effective way to learn and teach a language – especially for very young children. It has become the preferred pre-school model for Native American tribes trying to rebuild a generation of fluent first-language speakers.
One immersion preschool – the Lakȟól’iyapi Wahóȟpi, a Lakota Language Immersion Nest preschool, faces closure unless it can raise more than $200,000 in the next three months.
Tom Red Bird reads in Lakota to the Immersion Nest children, filmed by a documentary cameraman.
The Lakȟól’iyapi Wahóȟpi is featured in the upcoming documentary film, Rising Voices/ Hótȟaŋiŋpi. The Nest’s Director, Thipiziwin Young, speaks in the film about the importance of the Nest for families, children and elders. Elder Tom Red Bird rides a bus down from Bismarck every day to help out as a fluent speaker.
A crowdfunding campaign has been set up at https://www.gofundme.com/LakotaNest, but sustaining donors are also sought for long-term support.
The Lakȟól’iyapi Wahóȟpi is housed on the Sitting Bull College campus, located on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Reservation in North Dakota. It opened its doors in September 2012 with seven 3 year olds as students. Since that time, four more students have entered. The initial cohort are now six years old and in their third year of the immersion program.
The children in this immersion school are 100% immersed in the Lakota language for 8 hours a day, 4 days a week. All instruction is conducted in Lakota with lessons mixing traditional Lakota seasonal and cultural knowledge with best practices in early childhood education.
The students are not only learning the Lakota language and helping to save the language and culture, they are also learning the same early childhood lessons as students in other preschools, just in a different language. Research from other immersion schools across the world show that students who attend immersion schools often test better than their peers on standardized assessments that are given in English.
Parents, teachers, and community members want to expand the immersion school into kindergarten and 1st grade for the 2015-2016 school year. However, an initial ANA grant to establish the Nest preschool ran out in June of 2014.
“We have been just barely getting by on tuitions and other small grants,” said Thipiziwin Young, Director, “but if the Nest does not locate a funding source their doors will officially close on June 30th. We desperately need allies to bring the Lakota Language back to a healthy state for our children.”
