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A three-year project to record, preserve, and provide educational access to interviews with tribal elders who are fluent native speakers of the Lakota/Dakota language.

Sitting Bull College (SBC) proposes a three-year humanities initiative designed to record a dwindling collection of fluent speakers of the Lakota/Dakota language on the Standing Rock Reservation in North and South Dakota. These recordings of elders, who began their lives speaking the Lakota/Dakota language, are an invaluable part of efforts to reinvigorate the endangered Lakota/Dakota language. Fluent speakers, immersed in “Lakota/Dakota thought” speak differently and it is important to record this to create a “bridge” between a dwindling generation of fluent speakers and a new generation of young speakers who are learning Lakota/Dakota as a first language and will one day seek to draw on these resources. The project, guided by Sitting Bull College faculty and staff in cooperation with the speakers themselves, will create a vast well of primary source recordings in both audio and video for future generations to draw on. The three part project will engage local speakers in conversation

[Media coverage]

Project fields:
Languages, Other; Native American Studies; U.S. History

Program:
Humanities Initiatives: Community Colleges

Division:
Education Programs

Totals:
$99,998 (approved)
$99,998 (awarded)

Grant period:
4/1/2016 – 3/31/2020