S2 Episode 3: Revitalizing Dakota Language

Collegeland

Teachers of indigenous languages encounter a difficult problem: how to use the classroom, so long a site of white supremacist , violence and language loss for native people, to step outside of a Western viewpoint and rebuild native ways of being?

This week we hear from leaders in Dakota Language revitalization connected to the University of Minnesota, Šišóka Dúta and his former student and now colleague Raine Cloud.

Dúta and Cloud share their stories of learning Dakota Language as adults and how they have become teachers of the language. They also are starting an innovative project designed to preserve first-language speakers’ use of Dakota in a collaboration between the University of Minnesota and the College of Sisseton Wahpeton, a tribal college on the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota. They address the challenges and possibilities of working through universities to revitalize Dakota language and culture.

How can universities can redress prior wrongs? How can they build relationships with Native peoples that are empowering rather than extractive? Programs like the one Dúta helped start in Minnesota offer models for people across higher education who seek to hold universities accountable for past harms and create transformative community partnerships.

To learn more about Dakota revitalization and our guests:

You can follow Šišóka Dúta on Twitter

@sisokaduta

American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota offers Dakota and Ojibwe language instruction. You can read about their offerings at https://cla.umn.edu/ais/undergraduate/dakota-ojibwe-language-programs

Sisseton Wahpeton College is a tribal college located on the Lake Traverse Reservation and has partnered with the University of Minnesota on the Dakota Language Journal Project.

https://www.swcollege.edu/

For information on Minnesota Transform, the Mellon Grant Program at the University of Minnesota that supports the Dakota Language Journal Project

https://ias.umn.edu/programs/public-scholarship/minnesota-transform

University of Wisconsin online Dakota Dictionary

https://filemaker.cla.umn.edu/dakota/home.php I

The Dakota Wicohan

https://dakotawicohan.org/