Sunday, December 1, 2013

Teaching the Lakota language to the Lakota | Al Jazeera America

Teaching the Lakota language to the Lakota | Al Jazeera America:

Teaching the Lakota language to the Lakota

    
December 1, 2013  9:00AM ET
Only 6,000 people speak the Lakota language, few of them under 65, but people are working to keep it alive
Topics:
 
American Indian
 
Race & Ethnicity
 
South Dakota
Native American, Indian Country, Lakota, language, South Dakota
In Our Lady of Lourdes Elementary School on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, teacher Gloria Two Crow conducts a Lakota language session.
Kayla Gahagan
PINE RIDGE INDIAN RESERVATION, S.D. — Dodge tumbleweeds and stray dogs. Venture down a deeply rutted dirt road. Walk into the warmth of a home heated by a wood-burning stove. There'll be a deer roast marinating on the kitchen counter.
It is here, in a snug home that sits on the edge of nearly 3 million acres of South Dakota prairie, that you'll find the heart of a culture. It's here, at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where Joe and Randi Boucher make dinner for their two young daughters. The smaller one squirms and is gently admonished: "Ayustan," she is told — leave it alone.
It's here where the Lakota language is spoken, taught and absorbed in day-to-day life.
That makes the Boucher home a rare find. According to the UCLA Language Materials Project, only 6,000 fluent speakers of the Lakota language remain in the world, and few of those are under the age of 65. Of the nearly 30,000 people who live on Pine Ridge, between 5 and 10 percent speak Lakota.
For the past four decades, the race to save the language has started and stuttered, taken on by