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 l

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 a

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 o

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 teac

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 practic

May is National Teacher Appreciation Month. May 3 marks the official National Teacher Appreciation Day – a day to honor educators everywhere; a day to honor those who influence and change the lives of young people all over the country. On this occasion, we would like to extend our deepest gratitude to those who have made LLC’s work poss

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 strengthen

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

We’ve received a great many questions about lodging information for this year’s LSI, which is now confirmed! Participants are encouraged to read through the information below and get in touch if you have any questions.   PRAIRIE KNIGHTS CASINO HOTEL We invite our guests to stay at the Prairie Knights Casino Hotel at a special rate