Elder Cy Standing (right) teaches Liara Tootoosis about the Oceti Sakowin Oyate (The Seven Council Fires). (Submitted/Lois Standing)

By Alison Sandstrom

A community effort

New Dakota language program gaining momentum in Wahpeton

Nov 1, 2020 | 9:32 AM

A new program at Wahpeton Dakota Nation is bringing community members of all ages together to revitalize and retain the Dakota language.

Since September, it’s seen around 15 people gather each Saturday and Sunday in the Wahpeton School gym to practice Dakota with Elders who speak it as their first language.

Lois Standing, project lead for the Northern Dakota Language Group, started the initiative in collaboration with her father, who leads the sessions along with three other first-language speakers.

Standing told paNOW the program grew out of the desire of first-language speakers to connect with the community and share their knowledge.

“To share some of their stories, the language, the culture, and some of the traditions that are specific to our community,” she said. “And what they remember growing up when the Dakota language was the main language spoken in Wahpeton.”

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The interference of enforced residential institutions drastically decreased the number of Dakota-speakers in Wahpeton and elsewhere.

Today, only 2,000 Dakota and Lakota speakers remain worldwide.

“This is a critical time for our language,” said Standing. “There are very few fluent speakers left in the world and even in our community.”

Interest and attendance growing

The program initially began in March but had to be suspended shortly after due to the pandemic.

Now that it’s back up and running with careful protocols to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Standing said it’s been building momentum.

“Members that live outside the community, like from Saskatoon, are starting to drive in because they want that opportunity to learn firsthand from speakers,” she said.

Some Elders are also travelling long distances to participate, something Standing said she is deeply grateful for.

“One of the language speakers comes from Conquest, so she travels every weekend to come to the community because she sees the importance of being there to share the language,” she explained.

For now, organizers are keeping numbers small because of the pandemic. But in the future, the hope is to have at least 40 participants attending sessions.

Standing said they’re also looking into ways to record information and teachings for future use.

Connecting with language and culture

Meetings open with a prayer and one of the Elders talks about the importance of the language and provides guidance on how to learn it. From there, a lot of the practice is around sounds.

“Many of the participants of the group, they grew up speaking English,” Cy Standing, Lois’ father and one of the first-language speakers who leads sessions, said in a media release.

“For me, Dakota is my first language, and there’s a lot of sounds in the Dakota language that aren’t in English. So we have spent a lot of time practicing those sounds. We’ve also spent time on a mapping exercise connecting what families lived where, connecting with our Dakota names, connecting with the land. It is important for us to begin by connecting in this way so that we can truly connect with who we are as a people through our traditional language.”

Wahpeton Dakota Nation Chief John Waditaka applauded the efforts of Lois Standing, Cy Standing and first-language speakers in making the program a reality.

“The program is community-driven and that’s what makes this initiative vital to retaining our stories. I think our community members really see the importance of revitalizing our traditional language,” he said, in part, in a media release.

The new language program is part of a larger effort by Wahpeton Dakota Development and the Northern Dakota Language Group to document and retain the traditional language and culture of the Oceti Shakowin.

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alison.sandstrom@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @alisandstrom