Pilámayaye, Lakota Speakers!

THE PROBLEM: One of the most awful chapters of Real American History is the government policy of "assimilating" indigenous tribes by removing children from their families and stripping away their languages via cruel punishments in boarding schools. This has meant the extinction of hundreds of unique languages among surviving tribes in the US and Canada, not to mention anywhere Europeans have colonized the planet.

WHO'S ALREADY ON IT: Language revitalization programs have been arising since the Civil Rights movement of the late 20th century, finding increased support and success in the 21st century. Inspired by success in Hawa'ii and among the Maori in New Zealand, the Lakota Sioux tribes of North and South Dakota chose to partner up with a pair of American and European linguists in the early '00s, to realize a vision of Lakota language revival via high-quality teaching materials. Creating this catalog of media started with building a rigorous Lakota-English dictionary, but quickly branched out to popular forms like dubbed versions of the "Berenstain Bears" cartoons - you know, shows that everyone wanted to see!

(screenshot, YouTube page)

Making indigenous language fun, adventurous, modern, and future-oriented has driven other revitalization programs, leading to achievements like the Diné dubbing "Star Wars" into Navajo, ditto the upcoming Ojibwe-dubbed "Star Wars," and the "Useful Phrases in Lakota" page at omniglot.com including the always-handy "My hovercraft is full of eels." (Come on. IYKYK.)

And here is the latest production by the Lakota - specifically, the Standing Rock tribe in North Dakota. It's a doozy – THE AVENGERS, not only dubbed into Lakota, but dubbed by the original actors themselves: Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, and more!

(screenshot from AV Club page)

This, my readers, generates so much joy in me, I can't tell you. What I can tell you, and should tell you, is that I worked for the Lakota Language Consortium, partner with Standing Rock and the other six Lakota Sioux tribes in the US, writing grants and newsletters from 2010 to 2015, as the Berenstain Bears project came together and the New Lakota Dictionary expanded into another edition. I am thrilled that the Standing Rock tribal government has taken over the nonprofit and is now fully in charge of their language's vitality and re-integration into family life.

So let me use the few words I have retained from that time in my life to close out this post:

Wašté! Pilámayaye! Tókhi wániphika ní!

Good! Thank you! Good luck! Your work keeps me SANE.

(And thank you, Internet, for the online Lakota-English dictionaries at glosbe.com and omniglot.com!)

#Lakota #indigenous #lifeways #regeneration