Can you say that, wakánh'an?

Can everybody say that?

(crowd murmuring) Wakánh'an.

Very good.

Very good.

(woman) There was a point when Lakota was the only language we heard in this land.

When I speak Lakota, I feel connected.

I feel connected to all my relatives in the previous generations.

I feel connected to my land.

(bird cawing) There's nothing to compare it to, the feeling of being Lakota in Lakota country, speaking Lakota.

♪♪ (narrator) "Rising Voices" has been made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, celebrating 50 years of excellence.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Administration for Native Americans.

The Dakota Indian Foundation.

The North Dakota Humanities Council, and the South Dakota Humanities Council.

(commentator) Welcome to the 36th Annual Lakota National Invitational Tournament.

Tonight's first point semifinal game between the St. Francis Warriors and the White River Tigers.

(singing chant) (narrator) They were once called the Sioux Indians.

The people of the Lakota and Dakota tribes.

With over 170,000 tribal members, they make up one of the largest Indian nations in North American today.

(woman) About half of all Lakota Dakota people live on reservations primarily in North and South Dakota.

And over half of the people actually are now what I am, which is called an urban Indian.

Basically, you live off the reservation where there are better chances of getting employment.

(speaking Lakota) (narrator) Before Columbus, Lakota was one of 300 native languages spoken north of Mexico.

Today, only half of those languages remain.

Experts say that by the year 2050, just 20 indigenous American languages will exist.

The Lakota language is at risk.

Only 6,000 people speak Lakota and the average age of its speakers will soon be 70 years old.

(man) In my experience in the last 40 years, we went from a condition here in this community from hearing so much Lakota on a daily basis to now never hearing it because those few elders that are speaking, they seldom get together into a group where you can actually hear a discussion or a conversation in the language.

(singing chant) (JoAllyn) The problem with Lakota language is one that is shared with languages all over the world.

This is a time in human history where languages in large numbers are becoming extinct.

It's a universal problem, so we are not alone.

(narrator) It is a universal problem, but the Lakotas occupy a very particular place in the story of America.

(drums beating) (man) Meet the Sioux Indian.

The Sioux were and still are among the most colorful and interesting of all American Indians.

When people think of Native Americans, American Indians, they tend to think of Lakota people because of the stereotypes, the stereotypes that are around us even today such as the teepee, the buffalo, the war bonnets, clothing that has feathers.

And also romantic images on screen savers with the moon rising and the wolf howling.

They basically picture a northern plains warrior, a Lakota warrior.

The Lakota became the iconic image through literature and then eventually Hollywood.

(narrator) The Lakotas are the archetypal buffalo hunting nation of the Great Plains, represented countless times in popular culture, from Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show to the Oscar-winning "Dances with Wolves."

The Lakota image is strong in the American imagination, but as the language slips away, the Lakota identity is changing.

How can you distinguish yourself from other people?

How can, you know, if you cut off your braids, if you didn't have your tanned skin, you know, things like that, like, how would you... be able to prove that you're a Lakota?

(singing) How am I gonna prove that I'm Lakota, you know, if I don't know my language.

(narrator) The relationship between tribal language and identity is a central issue for many young Lakotas, and for the Lakota filmmaker, Milt Lee and his son, Murray Lee.

Hey, this is "You Got It."

I'm Murry Lee.

Today's topic is Lakota language.

Let's get to our first contestants.

What's your name?

Kayna Marie.

McKenzie Emaciyapi.

Rosie.

Shena Johnson.

Tomie.

Thristine LaPoint.

Michael.

Lorna.

Mato Smith.

Did anybody speak Lakota in your house?

Just really basic stuff, like, "hanta," get away from that.

Kinda sort of.

Are you nuts?

Nobody.

No.

Where are you from?

Standing Rock.

Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.

I was born and raised in Thunder Butte, South Dakota.

How much of the language do you need to speak to be an Indian?

A little bit.

A lot.

Lots and lots and lots.

None.

A lot.

I don't know, I think.

None of it.

I don't know.

Quite a bit, I suppose, um... None.

What if you used to speak the language but you forgot it?

Then I feel like you're forgetting yourself.

Uh, I don't know.

It happens.

What if you relearned it?

It'd take a couple months.

Rad.

Great.

You're still an Indian.

Speak with the elders.

When I see a Lakota kid that doesn't speak Lakota, I feel-- You know, I'm hurt from you not knowing the language.

If you speak the language, then you are an Indian.

No.

Of course not.

I think you're an Indian without it, too.

Okay, what if you don't speak the language?

Are you suddenly not an Indian?

No.

Who are you?

No.

You're still a native, but... No.

My tribal card says I'm an Indian, so I guess.

And I don't speak it.

You don't know how to speak it.

I still feel you're part of the Lakota people.

Okay, how about if you speak the language, but you also shop at Wal-Mart and you drive a big American truck?

Are you more or less of an Indian?

Depends on the kind of truck.

Maybe more.

Okay.

I don't think you're more or less.

You're still an Indian.

Less, yeah.

Less.

What if you're white and you speak Lakota really well?

Are you suddenly an Indian?

You could try to be.

You're joking.

No.

I know a lot of people who would say they are Indian inside.

(all) No.

We welcome you if you want to learn that language.

(Murray) And this has been "You Got It."

I'm Murray Lee, thanks for watching.

(narrator) For centuries, the language was a universal part of tribal life, but in the late 1800s, Lakota, like most native languages, began to fade.

This was no accident.

It was official US government policy for over 80 years.

(Jeffrey) The United States was so determined to get rid of Native American languages because they saw them as uncivilized.

They were impediments to progress.

The United States wanted these Native American cultures and societies to be Christian, to be English speaking, and eventually, to be absorbed into the American population.

(narrator) Language repression was only part of the larger war against Native Americans.

The United States took Indian land all over the country, a policy that led to war with many tribes.

At the legendary battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, Lakota warriors led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse destroyed George Custer and his men.

But a year later, Crazy Horse was stabbed to death in a scuffle with US soldiers.

In 1890, Sitting Bull, too, was killed, this time by Indian police in a bloody shootout.

That same year, the US Cavalry massacred some 200 men, women and children beside Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota.

Wounded Knee became a tragic emblem of government misdeeds.

(man) My grandmother was born in November of 1881.

She was nine years old when... when they killed Sitting Bull, and she remembered all of that.

And she'd tell us about it and she'd cry, and another day, she'd tell about it again and add some more and she'd cry.

So we kinda lived that history with her.

(narrator) In October 1879, a group of 82 Lakota children arrived in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

They'd come to a new school, Carlisle Indian Industrial School, established to civilize Indian children.

"All that is Indian in the race should be dead," the founders said.

"Kill the Indian and save the man," so it was that schools like Carlisle cut off Indian hair enforced Christianity and routinely punished children for the offense of speaking their native languages.

(John) My grandmother is a product of Carlisle.

She was taught homemaking skills in Carlisle.

She met my grandfather out in Carlisle.

They met out there, they came back, they got married and they raised their family.

When I was growing, there was this... How would you say?

It was a fear from your parents, from your grandparents, that... that they were punished for speaking a language.

And even though it was in our household, we-- We had to pick it up by ourselves.

(narrator) Carlisle became the model for dozens of Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools across the country and hundreds of schools sponsored by religious organizations.

For generations, they tried to assimilate Native Americans.

Right up through the 1960s.

Late '50s when I went to boarding school.

The worst part, you know, was cutting my hair.

To-- To kill the Indian in me.

Most of the harm was done in the dormitories, by the matrons.

The shaming.

My first language was Lakota, so I would normally respond in some Lakota way, so they knew that, so I was always-- My mouth was always being washed out with soap.

Teaching in the classroom, when we spoke to each other in Lakota, the teachers, they would say, don't be speaking gobbledygook.

I wasn't able to speak Lakota to my own children, 'cause I was afraid for them and what shame they would have to go through and I was afraid that they would be rejected in their education system and go through the punishments that I went through.

I know everyone has these stories.

It's kind of a common, commonality for all of us that we have parents or grandparents that have been punished for speaking their language and I realize that I don't know how that feels.

I don't carry that.

But I do carry the embarrassment and the shame of not being able to understand and speak my language.

People who don't speak the language, such as myself, find ways to express Lakota culture in their art or in the way that they live.

(narrator) The Lakota filmmaker Yvonne Russo describes one such person in her short film, "Renelle White Buffalo Paints Lakota."

(Renelle) I grew up in the country on the Rosebud Indian Reservation.

I was raised by my grandparents.

My grandma's name is Philomine White Buffalo.

She always talked about being in a boarding school.

In terms of the language, it was kind of hard for me to learn because she never really spoke it too much.

The reservation wasn't the place for me to pursue what I wanted to do and I always knew that I wanted to go to college, I wanted to be successful.

To do that, I had to leave the reservation.

I wanted to start painting for myself.

I wanted to draw something that I haven't drawn before, paint something that I haven't painted before.

My last name, since it's White Buffalo, the symbolism in the Buffalo came with finding myself and my voice as an artist and my voice as a Lakota.

I started putting circles in the four directions.

Lines that represented the borders of the reservation.

The Lakota colors, red, black, white and yellow represent the four directions, east, west, north and south.

I speak Lakota through my art.

(JoAllyn) Nowadays, when you go back to the res, hardly any of the kids speak the language at all.

Every young person who doesn't want to learn the language for whatever personal reasons is a loss for the future of the language, and so there are a lot of adults now, who are seeing the possible absolute loss of the language, creating programs and encouraging the young to learn how to speak the language.

(speaking Lakota) (narrator) Even the government, that for decades did its best to wipe out native languages is now trying to help.

The Lakota word for children, wakhányeza, comes from the word wakaN.

Sacred.

We want children like these wonderful young children here learning about their language and learning about their culture.

(narrator) Since the 1970s, Washington has passed laws to support tribal language education.

Even so, saving the language sometimes takes a backseat in Lakota country.

The reservations constantly struggle with some of the most desperate poverty in America.

(Kevin) Every ten years, the US census ranks all the counties according to economic indicators.

Among the ten poorest counties every ten years, every census, usually the six or seven poorest counties in the nation are here in South Dakota.

And these are the reservation areas, with the conditions of poverty, conditions of social dysfunction.

(narrator) In Lakota country, many people see language loss as a part of this problem and language revitalization as part of the solution.

(woman) There are so many issues here on the reservation with drugs and alcohol, suicides.

I think there's just so much that we can learn from our own language and the fact that our language is always here with us and that we've had just this big gap where it hasn't been there, and it really kind of left us at a loss for what to do, how to conduct ourselves in our own, you know, communities, with our own families and everything and I don't think, you know, the language is the only way that we can, you know, bring us back to being a really respectful and, you know, productive society, but I think it could help a lot.

Lakota actually probably saved my life.

(speaking Lakota) I was kind of a bad egg in some ways, you know.

(speaking Lakota) I used to drink and smoke, you know.

(speaking Lakota) I thought to myself, looking at my boy, I don't want my boy to see his dad doing this.

From that day on, I've been learning Lakota.

When I speak Lakota, there's definitely a pride that it's hard to describe.

(Nacole) I think I learned a lot about myself when I started learning Lakota.

Who wants to ask about somebody else in the room?

I was really lost before I start working with the language and I didn't really know what I was gonna do with myself.

Learning the language and helping others learn the language and teaching others and trying to help whenever I can.

Oh.

Everybody who has their cup, hold it up.

(speaking Lakota) Watch the stress.

(speaking Lakota) (speaking Lakota) You know, it's kind of consumed my life, but in a really good way.

(JoAllyn) Languages are wonderful human creations and they provide unique ways to speak about this world that we all live in.

(man) Now, in English, you say a thunderstorm is coming and there's lightning with it.

If we say that in Lakota, we say... (speaking Lakota) They have returned.

They've opened their eyes.

They're thundering, they're making noise.

And when we have a thunderstorm coming, we, without realizing it, would be thinking that, hey, there's a thunder being returning.

(Kevin) The Lakota is really specific in terms of describing different processes.

For instance, hléca which means the idea to tear.

If you tear something with your fingers, it's... yuhléca If you tear something with your teeth... yahléhléca If you tear something with pressure... pasléca If you tear something with your foot... nasléca If the wind blows and tears something, it's... wahléca And it goes on, there's more than this.

But I'm just trying to emphasize the fact that the Lakota language offers a different perspective, a different angle on the world that we live in.

(JoAllyn) English speakers can read Shakespeare, they can read the Bible, they can watch television with their kids and laugh at all the stupid things that all the cartoon characters say.

They can read newspapers from all over the world in English, and that is part of their basic social identity and part of a national culture, and that's why no one who's an English speaker would want to lose their language.

In the same way, Lakota people want to reinvigorate their language.

(man) I'm a Lakota teacher.

I don't have a whip with me.

It's not like government, okay?

And I think some of us probably remember that.

I remember that.

When I was-- First day I went to school, I couldn't speak English at all.

I didn't know even what yes or no is.

So when I speak a little bit about my language, what happened?

They punished me.

Sometimes, they'd throw me out of the classroom.

I want to bring this language back.

That's why I'm teaching.

I work hard at it, 'cause I'm not getting young anymore.

I want to teach everybody language.

We have seen in the past few years that there's been an increasing number of young Lakota people who want to learn Lakota and then they always ask, well, where can we go to speak with speakers?

Where do we find them?

(speaking Lakota) (narrator) One place to find fluent speakers is the Lakota Summer Institute, held each year at Sitting Bull College in North Dakota.

Native Speakers come here to learn how to teach the language they've spoken since childhood.

Someone who speaks Lakota fluently and who has been raised speaking Lakota fluently doesn't automatically make you the best Lakota language instructor just like myself, I wouldn't be the best English instructor, because I speak without thinking.

It's natural to me.

(men speaking Lakota) To try and explain sentence structure, verbs, conjugations in English, I'd have to go to school to learn everything that I needed to teach the students in.

That's what a lot of the fluent speakers are here for, as well.

(woman speaking Lakota) (narrator) In one writing class, Delores Taken Alive reads a short story by Sandra Black Bear.

(speaking Lakota) This ohunka is written by Sandra Black Bear.

(all laughing) (speaking Lakota) The class that I have there was-- Actually was process writing class and we were trying to get these speakers, Lakota language speakers, to the point where they will write material that they could use in the classroom.

They can structure it so that it's easy for young children to read it in Lakota.

(man) Okay.

(speaking Lakota) (narrator) For the past four decades, most kids on the reservations have taken Lakota classes, yet the language continues to fade away.

Hands down... (Nacole) While growing up, I always knew words.

Knew how to count, how to say numbers, knew animals like dog and cat.

What is "big" in Lakota?

(Nacole) Didn't know the alphabet.

I had never written even a sentence.

I work here at Little Wound school, Elementary Department, and I teach Lakota, the Lakota language, to the K through 5 students.

We get each student a half-hour a week.

On a good day, we can get in 25, 26 minutes of teaching.

(speaking Lakota) (students speaking Lakota) Sometimes it's very frustrating because I cannot take my students beyond the usual, identify this, or tell me what this means.

The amount I'm able to transmit to my students is very minimal and it's really not a good way to get a person fluent.

My own efforts with Spanish were futile.

I took five semesters of Spanish in college.

I couldn't get by in Spanish today.

I don't speak it fluently, I don't understand it and that's the problem with classroom teaching of any language, is that unless you're actually speaking it outside of the classroom, it's ineffective.

(narrator) The students at Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge Reservation take daily classes in Lakota.

(speaking Lakota) (Philomine V.O.)

When I'm in a classroom, I will like for the students to start speaking Lakota without me pushing and pulling at 'em... You're the first to go.

(Philomine V.O.)

I can give 'em the words and, you know, they can look it up and they can use it appropriately and know its structure.

There are days when we have real good days and they just start speaking Lakota on their own and I just-- My heart swells with pride and I think, we have hope.

We have hope, I have hope, I have hope.

They're doing it and I don't want to break their momentum.

Those are rare.

Happy.

(speaking Lakota) To eat.

(Philomine V.O.)

Sometimes I tell the students that they are in the biggest battle of their life and they look at me and wonder, what battle?

And that's when I tell them that you're gonna fight this battle by speaking it and learning it and using it and spreading it and teaching, go home and teach your family, that, that is the biggest battle of your life.

You are-- Right now, you are right there, and if you do not do any of that, then you will have lost the battle of the Lakota language.

♪♪ (crowd cheering) (man) Basketball is by far the biggest sport on the reservation.

People love it.

Kids start playing at an early age.

They have a Lakota Nation Invitational Tournament, which is-- which is a huge tournament, and you know, the communities just flock to Rapid to watch their children play.

(cheering and applause) (commentator) ...for two.

A rebound for the Lady Chieftains (man speaking Lakota) (Matthew) They've added the Lakota Language Bowl.

(speaking Lakota) (narrator) The Lakota Language Bowl takes place at the very same time and in the very same building as the basketball tournament, but the two contests are strikingly different.

(Matthew) There's not as big a crowd at the Lakota Language Bowl as there is at the games.

(man) Next sentence.

(Matthew) The whole situation with language is a much bigger situation than a basketball tournament.

Any problems over here we gotta exchange, you guys will just run a wide exchange.

(Matthew) I can show you how to play basketball.

I can teach you how to dribble, I can teach you how to shoot, I can teach you how to play defense.

(commentator) Trying a new phrase...

He's gonna explain it to you.

It's gonna be-- Remember those sentences we talked about?

You're gonna finish.

You're gonna finish sentences.

(Matthew) Whereas something like language revitalization, that's a process that's gonna take years, not just a weekend and it's over.

I mean, if you don't have a language, how do you get to that language, how do you get that fluency?

It's really good to-- to want it, but it's still a process.

♪♪ (Philomine) If we live on this Pine Ridge Indian reservation, then we have an obligation to start speaking the language, everyone.

Every person.

Even if it's one word at a time and using it daily 'til they're comfortable, that's the only way we have a breakthrough, an individual breakthrough to overcome whatever all the factors are within a person to not speak the language.

I started getting involved with the Lakota language and having it be a part of our team.

When I started doing language at basketball practice, the kids were excited, they ate it up.

These are all words that we got from an elder that they felt were useable for our purposes.

Kapsísica for dribble.

Kah' ol iyéya for a pass, khuté to shoot, ká.na for miss, we use yuhpá for rebound.

We don't have a lot of dunkers, so.

We never had to learn that word.

I myself really love basketball, just as much as I love the language and bringing it back.

Yeah, when it comes to culture, uh... ... We take a backseat.

There are many people at basketball games and there's hardly anyone at the LNI Lakota Language or Knowledge Bowl.

(drums beating) I believe we need just as much people cheering our Lakota speakers on as we have at a basketball game.

(man) Next one is bells.

Hla hla.

(all laughing) (indistinct children chatter) Woo!

(speaking Lakota) (Tipiziwin) This is a Lakota language immersion nest.

It's the first on Standing Rock.

We have 11 three- to five-year-olds.

The rules are pretty simple.

And I'm breaking 'em right now.

We're not allowed to talk English in here.

One of the first steps we want them to know is how to address a person properly, and their proper kinship.

My students, I call them thakóza, grandchildren.

And that's what they call me, lalá, grandfather.

I'm proficient enough to direct the kids in the Nest and been able to stay in there and learn with them.

I'm definitely learning with them.

Tom, we are blessed to have him.

A fluent speaker.

If I might say something wrong, he can, you know, take me aside and say, "Actually it's this," or if there's a different word, he'll say, "And also, it can be said like this."

(speaking Lakota) (Tipiziwin) There's really very few people willing to do what he does.

Get on a bus all the way down from Bismarck, daily.

We got seven that are going-- going into kindergarten, and that's my main concern.

They go into kindergarten and forget all our teachings.

(Tipiziwin) We have children that come from Bismarck, Little Eagle, Mandan and Cannonball.

Some of them make a round trip of, you know, two hours a day.

We basically are building a sidewalk as we're walking down it.

(narrator) There are only a handful of immersion programs in Lakota country.

They serve just a tiny percentage of the thousands of students in reservation schools.

(Tipiziwin) It's just these little tiny bits, but again, the reality of where we are with our language is, that little tiny bit is better than nothing at all.

(speaking Lakota) The kids have clocked more hours hearing the Lakota language than anyone in my generation ever had the opportunity to do.

I've heard more Lakota than I've ever heard in my whole life, working in there for the past two years.

(man) Antoine, Antoine...

This day care is called Iyápi Glukínipi, bringing their language back to life.

We have ten kids.

They are all children who started under the age of two.

(speaking Lakota) And our goal here is to have them become fluent in Lakota alongside the English that they're inevitably learning at home.

Zí.

Zí.

Zí (speaking Lakota) (man) We are today at the Lakhóta Wóglaka Wóunspe school, which is an immersion school, meaning that all what we teach is taught in Lakota.

We don't teach the language itself.

We use the language to teach everything else.

What color is this one?

Zí.

Zí.

What color's... Zí.

(speaking Lakota) (Didier) Here, we have kindergarteners and first through fifth grade this year.

(children shouting in Lakota) (teacher speaking Lakota) (Didier) From the very youngest one to the old--the older ones, you know, you see them counting in Lakota, you see them answering Lakota questions in Lakota with the numbers and this is...

This is really a sign that the language is going, you know, towards them.

There are so many who are not in immersion schools and very few here.

We have about 30... 30 students right now.

(speaking Lakota) Lucas.

(Didier) We want to multiply the schools like ours here.

Try to have in each community a place where the families who choose to have their children in an immersion program can without traveling miles and miles and miles.

(speaking Lakota) (JoAllyn) Bringing back a native language from near-extinction is very complicated and it's a very expensive proposal.

(speaking Lakota) (JoAllyn) Most of these places survive on grants.

That means from year to year, they have to get more support money to keep those classes going, and then when the children graduate to the next school, they may not have an immersion program there.

(narrator) For years, people have come to the reservations to learn about Lakota culture.

A few stay long enough to learn the language and a very few have learned the language well enough to teach it.

These outsiders play a vital role in the attempt to rescue Lakota.

(Didier chanting) (JoAllyn) We shouldn't resent the fact that some of these teachers are not native.

If we don't support all of this, we are so close to losing this language in the next 50 years.

(Didier) I was a philosophy professor in France.

I came here, working with the Lakota Tribal Council for several years.

I was adopted first in a traditional hunkápi ceremony.

And I got married as well.

I learned the language, essentially, by immersion.

Sitting Bull said, let us put our minds together to see what we can do for our children, and when you meet a different culture, a different people, to take the good from them and leave the bad.

I'm not Lakota, I'm white, I didn't grow up speaking the language and yet when I came out here to live, it was important enough to me, it was something that I saw as valuable enough that I spent seven, eight, nine, ten years of my life learning it to fluency.

I'm not from Pine Ridge Reservation.

(Matthew) I'm not Lakota.

My wife, she's Lakota.

And my children are Lakota.

I wanted to really enhance my own children's lives and maybe give to other children the same kind of sense of pride or sense of self that having your own language gives you.

I'm not a fluent speaker of Lakota, although I am Lakota, and if these people can come in from other parts of the world and be able to learn my language in a fluent, conversational manner, then I can, too.

(speaking Lakota) (children shouting) Yeah!

(children speaking Lakota) (Tipiziwin) Our language is learnable.

I didn't really think that and I didn't see it before me in a way that I did after-- after I met them.

And they are truly our allies.

(Jan) Like all of the Native American languages, Lakota originally wasn't a written language.

Missionaries developed the first orthography based on the Latin alphabet in the first half of the 19th century, with the missionaries among the Lakota.

They created the first orthography, but it was not adequate, because the missionaries didn't hear all the phonemes, all the sounds, the meaningful sounds of the language, so they simplified the language.

When I was in high school, you know, I found this Lakota dictionary in a museum.

I became interested and learned a lot from the old sources.

I came to Lakota country.

I figured out that a lot of the older materials were not reliable.

My learning of Lakota was a lot of learning and unlearning.

(speaking Lakota) (Junior) When I first came to Lakota Summer Institute, and walking into a class with the man from the Czech Republic speaking fluent Lakota, that's not what I expected at all.

At first, I felt embarrassed for not knowing as much as he did, but his drive and determination and wanting and willingness to help Lakotas to save the language has really changed my outlook on anyone who wants to learn Lakota.

I figured, you know, okay, well, I'll give him a chance because I heard him from a distance and he was very fluent.

Sounded like my grandpa.

I think, first and foremost, we own the language of people who are Lakota, 'cause it's like we were born into this, but we share it, and so it's-- You know, it's ours, but it's also ours to share with everybody, so, yeah, we're not stingy about it.

(speaking Lakota) (Nacole) We make sure if somebody wants to learn it, we'll help them learn it.

(Jan) As a linguist in a native community, you have to earn the people's trust.

They need to know that the work you do is... is geared towards something practical that will have some impact in the community.

So the project that we're working on is a project to record all the words in the Lakota dictionary, 22,000 words recorded by native speakers.

What they are creating now is going to be a model of Lakota language pronunciation for generations to come.

So, this has to be done correctly.

Instead of ki... You know, when we say it in fast speech, we say ki?.

We sort of just say ki?, but stretch it.

Ki...

But really there's a stop in between "ki'i?."

(woman speaking Lakota) (Jan) Here we are in the studio with seven native speakers.

You know, imagine you have to read-- In a row, you have to read 500 words.

(men speaking Lakota) (Jan) We're trying to cover all the words and do it well.

Before there was English, Lakota society used Lakota in all sorts of settings.

In order for Lakota to survive this, what needs to happen is that Lakota has to reclaim these old territories and claim new ones, When I was a little girl, I remember seeing cartoons.

Smurfs, and He-Man and She-ra.

And I said, "Wow that would be really cool if we could do something like that in our language.

(speaking in Lakota) (Jan) "The Berenstain Bears" series dubbed into Lakota.

It's one of those things that are hugely important for language learning.

The movie, if it stays just one movie, just one project, then it is really just symbolic.

But we need more of these things.

(Naomi) I was doing Brother Bear's voice.

He would say something like this.

(speaking Lakota) I have four children.

To strengthen our Lakota language in the home, I label things such as the chair, oákanke, or the desk, akán wówapi.

Or the TV, "wichítena.ka.ka," or the computer, wóunspe omnáye.

And so I label everything.

Their books, wówapi.

I even went into their storybooks and translated their lines into Lakota.

Um.

(Alayna V.O.)

I made giant alphabet letters and we hung those up on her wall.

With some of the phrases that we've been learning, I've been teaching my daughter, we're working on conjugation with her.

♪♪ (woman) "Verb Phrases in Lakota," a short film by Alayna Eagle Shield and Kyyalyn Eagle Shield.

(speaking Lakota throughout) (woman) I have three young kids.

I'm expecting my fourth child.

My job is very busy.

All my energy is on my kids, on my job and then my part-time business and I just have no energy at the end of the day to sit down and be self-disciplined enough to learn the language at this time.

My interest, probably not as much as my husband's.

He chooses to stay up late, and he'll be on the online forum learning the language and then he'll go through the dictionary.

Free-throw.

Free-throw, yeah.

(dog barking) (Desiree) But he's up until, like, midnight, and I am just so exhausted from the day that I just-- I go to bed.

I need to sleep.

We're in the dining room here, so I like to label the actions that occur in the dining room, and so I got here, like, wótA, yútA.

Things to describe eating.

Same thing here with kalá and akála, refers to, like, sprinkling or kinda like salt, pepper shaker type thing.

I find that that really helps me learn the action verbs of the environment that we're in.

They used to be very basic.

Yeah.

Uh, door, up here.

Yeah, table, chair.

Window.

Yeah.

And since-- Yeah, they get more advanced.

As I progress, yeah.

As he progresses.

(laughing) I would like to converse with my husband, eventually.

I know that maybe he sees it as a little bit of frustration that I'm not where he is, but eventually, I want to be where he is.

When our kids are grown and it's just us two, I hope to be able to be conversational with him.

My students, they put history and the Lakota language together, and to my students, it's back here, and it's not up here, so I have a hard time getting them to see that they can use it in their daily modern lives, so for that reason, it's not cool, because anything old isn't cool.

(JoAllyn) I don't want the Lakota language to become an artifact like a moccasin in a museum that was made in the 1850s, which is a wonderful artifact and has value in its own self, but I don't want the Lakota language to be an artifact like that.

(narrator) The Lakota filmmaker Dana Claxton shows how context can give new meaning to traditional artifacts and language in her short film "Tradition Transformation."

♪♪ (distorted voice speaking Lakota) ♪♪ (distorted voice speaking Lakota) (birds chirping) (Alayna) Recently, one of the elders from... our reservation passed away.

She lived a long life and she did a lot for people with the language, especially, and it wasn't that...

I was sad for her family or for her for leaving, 'cause everybody dies.

What really made me sad and what made me feel so bad about the passing of our elders was-- is that this is real.

It's-- They're really dying and we have to take over.

We can't pass with our language just knowing phrases.

We can't just know vocabulary, we can't know-- Like, we really do have to push it in full gear and learn how to communicate with each other.

I was told stories about... the old ones, when they would learn English... ♪♪ ...that they were very proud of when they learned English, even if they messed up they would speak it all the time.

(buzzing) (man) Bló.

(speaking Lakota) (Travis) We need for our young people when they learn Lakota that they want to speak Lakota.

(boy) Keep your hand on your button.

(man) I said, this language revitalization.

It's larger than one person.

It's larger than one band of Lakota.

We may think it's gone or going to be gone, but if we focus as we are our attention to it, it'll return.

And it may seem a daunting task, but it can be done with everybody's prayers and believing in those prayers.

(speaking Lakota) (singing Lakota prayer) (JoAllyn) Languages encapsulate the notions of how you approach the gods, how you speak to them.

Some people believe that spirits don't hear prayers in English, and you cannot pray in English as effectively as you can in Lakota.

So many languages around the world are dying.

I hope that Lakota people cannot fall in to that trap of being survivors of a dead language.

I hope modern Lakota people, particularly the younger people who have developed a sense that, if you're a speaker, you're so much more Lakota than all of those non-speakers.

I think that's a bit prejudice, but I don't mind that at all if the language survives.

(man speaking Lakota) So I truly hope the language survives.

But at 72, it's not going to be me that saves the language, it's going to be my grandchildren.

(Philomine) I want to teach you two words.

When you enter a room, you say waná wahí, I'm here now.

And then when you exit a room, you say tok.a akhé, I will see you again later.

But tok.a akhé is short.

Tok.a akhé wanchiyankin kte means I will see you again later, because we do not have goodbyes in Lakota.

We believe life is a cycle and we will see each other again, if not in this world, in another world.

And that's our belief system.

No goodbyes.

OháN.

♪♪ (narrator) "Rising Voices" has been made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, celebrating 50 years of excellence.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Administration for Native Americans.

The Dakota Indian Foundation.

The North Dakota Humanities Council, and the South Dakota Humanities Council.

♪♪ For information and videos about Lakota language and culture, visit RisingVoicesFilm.com.

To order a copy of "Rising Voices," call 888-525-6828, or visit LanguagePress.com.