Revitalizing Dakota Language
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Nan
I’m Nan Enstad, in Madison, Wisconsin.
Lisa
I’m Lisa Levenstein, in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Nan
And this is Collegeland!
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Nan
So back in May, an indigenous community in British Columbia found unmarked graves at the site of a former residential boarding school—over 200 bodies. A month later, people found 750 more graves in Saskatchewan. And the numbers kept growing.
These schools were part of a state-run program—most of them in partnership with the Catholic Church—that forcibly removed children from their families and did everything they could to strip them of their native culture. And it wasn’t just in Canada, it was also right here in the U.S.
Šišóka
Basically, they would take, uh, our children, uh, when they're about six to seven years old, and then they would, take them to a boarding school, hundreds, or even thousands of miles away from home. And they would, uh, force them to assimilate, uh, dress in the fashion of European peoples at that time, cut their hair, and then, uh, speak American English. And if they were caught speaking their tribal language or practicing their tribal ways, they were punished physically, verbally, mentally, emotionally, you know, all these, uh, punishments are pretty severe.
And so a lot of people decided they didn't want their children to go through that. So they would say, okay, you have to speak American English now. And, now we're finding, uh, all these graves at these boarding schools…unmarked graves.
Nan
That’s Šišóka Dúta.
Šišóka
[Dakota Introduction, no transcription of the translation available]
My Dakota name is Šišóka Dúta and I'm from the, uh, Sisseton-Wahpeton Bde Hdakiya people and part Wašíču also and I live here in St. Paul, and I teach Dakota language at the University of Minnesota.
Nan
I talked to Šišóka this week about a Dakota language revitalization project going on there—but, you just can’t talk about that without starting with this history.
Lisa
Yeah, as a Canadian, when I found out about those unmarked graves, I just felt…gutted. And it was huge news across the country for weeks. I remember calling my mother one day and asking how she was, and she was like, “honestly, I’m not very good, we are all reeling here from the discovery of the unmarked graves.” And that’s my mom. She’s not someone who is out protesting on the street these days but she was really shook.
I think one of the reasons it hit us so hard is that my mom was also an educator and while we all like to think of schools as nurturing places, here was this blatant example of schools being arenas of extreme, state-sponsored violence.
Nan
Exactly. And I think it’s really important for people to realize that this is not just the distant past. The legacy of this lives on in the schools we have right now. Universities not only sit on stolen land, but they generated their endowments by renting or selling land that the federal government expropriated from tribes and then gave to universities. The model of knowledge has been similar: treat indigenous people and tribal resources as subjects to be studied and then extract the cultural and economic value.
But Šišóka is working on changing that in his Dakota language classes.
For native students at a predominantly white, settler institution, the general classroom can be a really tough place. One of Šišóka’s students, Raine Cloud, told me what it was like to be in Šišóka’s class and how learning Dakota language became so meaningful to her and other Native students.
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Raine
You know, the thing about Dakota class and any class that has to do with culture or language, it just really brings you closer and I felt like those classmates were like my relatives, like these were my cousins, my little cousins, my nieces nephews, cause they're like way younger than me. And I'm like, um, so it was a different feeling for me um, in that class and to this day, we're all still friends. And it's really cool because that's when I seen like the light bulb of community, um, how important that is for a native student to have
And so that's when I seen, um, how important that is for a native student to have community at college where you're really a minority, you know, um, it just really brings you closer and I felt more connected and I wasn't a traditional student. I was like in my thirties, I had a daughter, like there was just different challenges and I almost felt like I don't belong here. What am I doing here? You know, it just was a very odd experience. And then, um, one thing I noticed was during those kinds of classes, there's always one student or maybe two students who will get up and walk out crying, or sometimes they cry in class and I'm like, this doesn't happen in English class. This doesn't happen to biology class. This happens in our language classes. Why does that happen? Because there's a connection here, you know, to our heart. It's like deep inside of us. I think that's why learning language. Like you need connection; you need community because this is hard stuff.
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Lisa
It’s amazing to hear of Raine’s experience, because I had honestly never considered the fact that people could teach Native American languages at a university. And, I can say that even as my office is right next door to our languages, literatures, and cultures department. I mean I hear different languages spoken all the time.
Nan
Yeah, well, generally it takes a native community demanding that a university offer their language-- so it’s not everywhere. The programs at the University of Minnesota are the result of indigenous student activism in the 1960s. Students, faculty, and tribal representatives drew up a plan for a program of Native American Studies in 1969, and it included developing curriculum to teach the tribal languages spoken in Minnesota, Dakota and Ojibwe.
But this is not just, like, learning new vocabulary words, it’s confronting a history of violence and loss and how that reverberates through your community and your family. That’s where this journey started for Šišóka.
Šišóka
My grandparents, maternal grandparents were both fluent Dakota speakers, and my paternal grandmother was a fluent Dakota speaker. And my grandfather, paternal grandfather, he was actually a hundred percent Norwegian. You know, At that time when my parents were born, they were both born in 1948, it was just kind of like this, American exceptionalism and like assimilation first policies. My grandparents, they said, uh, we're not going to teach Dakota because, we want you to learn English and you know, that they all went to boarding schools. And, you know, because of that, they didn't want to teach their children Dakota language. So I didn't grow up speaking it, but when I became a teenager, uh, I did a family history project and realized that, you know, we had our own language and, I talked to my grandfather and found out he spoke the language. And so then he gave me a Dakota name.
Once I had my name, I was like, you know, became more and more curious all the time about our language. And I would go through the dictionary, looking at different words. Then my mother said, why don't you come to this, uh, Dakota language class, it's free; it's a community class. So I went with her and that's where I met Neil McKay,
Neil encouraged me to take the Dakota language class at the University of Minnesota. So ever since 2000, fall of 2000, I've been studying, learning, teaching the Dakota language. I guess it's kind of like 21 years now.
Nan
You know, I really want to talk about like the loss of Dakota language. And I, I resonated with your story because, uh, I had grandparents who spoke fluent Norwegian and they did not teach my dad Norwegian, so he didn't learn Norwegian. And so I don't know. I wish I knew Norwegian, you know, but, but there's something very different, I think, right, between my loss of Norwegian, you know, and that urge to assimilate there's some similarities, but there's some real differences too, right, between that and the loss of Dakota language.
Šišóka
For Dakota people and other indigenous peoples, we were forced to stop speaking our language, uh, um, versus, when people came here and they were speaking a different language, such as Norwegian, I would say like Northern Europe, you know, it was more like, uh, "you shouldn't be speaking that way anymore. Speak American English, you know, give that up,” you know? And so, you know, there was a little bit of a, uh, you know, kind of like. Uh, social kind of Peer pressure.
Nan
Peer pressure!
Šišóka
Yeah, to give that up. Versus I think other peoples from other parts of the world who were, you know, uh, I guess, you know, darker skin tones, you know, they were kind of like ostracized and made fun of, you know, not only for who they are physically, but, you know, because they're speaking a different language and it's viewed as “backwards.” I think Dakota language was viewed the same way. It's backward. It's not civilized it's “savage.” And “heathen.” And so, the plan was to assimilate us into American society. And, uh, there's a famous quote by, uh, Richard Pratt and he says, "kill the Indian, save the man."
Nan
yeah.
Šišóka
People didn't want their children and grandchildren to go through that and so at the time they thought, well, "just speak English and we'll get through this." And it's a survival mechanism.
Nan
Yeah, it seems the same as my grandparents, but it's so not, Well--
Šišóka
It was survival, I, you know, at that time. And so a lot of the elders at, uh, grandparents and great-grandparents, they still kept speaking Dakota to each other, you know, they would just do it at home. And then also, some of them said, uh, no, they were going to pass it on, you know.
They passed it onto the next generation. So we do have a number of adults and elderly who are still fluent in their language. And thank goodness to those people because, you know, they kept our language alive.
Dakota language is here in this, uh, uh, part of the world. And so you could think of it like Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, parts of Nebraska, Montana. Like that's a big geographical area, but, uh, that's, that's kind of where we're at right now as Dakota and Lakota. So, uh, we can't go anywhere else to learn Dakota language. It's only here in this part of the world. I think the difference with Norwegian is you could always go back to Norway, and learn Norwegian. But with us, we can't go anywhere. And once, uh, all of our speakers are gone, that's it.
But we don't want to get to that point. There's still Dakota speakers who are alive today. And, uh, we're trying to do everything we can to kind of take that knowledge from the elders and pass it on to the next generation so we don't, kind of like, lose any, any fluent speakers we've got, we had to create new little fluent speakers. It was kinda like, uh, so we don't break that, uh, chain.
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Nan
You know, Lisa, this actually really sucks, but I have to acknowledge at this point that my own family history is part of this story. I mentioned my Norwegian grandfather to Šišóka; his father settled on Dakota land in 1869 in Walnut Grove, Minnesota. And if that name sounds familiar to you, it's because it's the very same place where Little House on the Prairie took place, that famous book, TV show, movie...
Lisa
I loved it.
Nan
My family mythology has been like, kind of mixed up with the stories in that book and it was totally romanticized in my childhood. But, my great-grandparents arrived just seven years after the Dakota War, which ended with the largest execution in U.S. history; the federal government executed 38 Dakota people in Mankato, Minnesota, which was 80 miles from Walnut Grove.
Most Dakota people were then driven out of Minnesota and into North and South Dakota and into Canada, leaving a lot of land open to white settlers. And so the “Enstad homestead,” the economic foundation for my family was literally built on the devastation and exile that Šišóka was talking about.
Lisa
And, of course, one of the consequences of that devastation is a loss of traditional knowledge, including language.
Nan
Yeah, exactly. There was basically a hundred years of trying to obliterate the language and Šišóka thinks there's only about three hundred first language Dakota speakers left. They're pretty much all elderly and the risk is real. Some tribes have lost their languages.
Lisa
So how do you retain that, or rebuild it?
Nan
Well, beyond offering language classes, there are actually some models for this. Šišóka knew about this really successful program that Anton Treuer started at Bemidji State University to revitalize Ojibwe. So, Šišóka decided to create a similar program for Dakota.
And now he and Raine are working on that together. The idea is to create a Dakota audio journal with recordings of first-language speakers, and pretty much all of them are elders. You know, it records how they speak, without an English accent and how they use the language, the grammar, their cadence, you know, how they express themselves. It’s an amazing resource for language learners, and it also preserves some of the elders’ stories.
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Šišóka
One of the things we've noticed for, uh, Dakota learners is they get to a certain point, and they kind of plateau in their language learning journey. And a lot of them don't have a, uh, advanced language learning materials.
We got the idea of like, well, what we really like to do is get a collection of recordings from fluent speakers, a variety of them, and transcribe them all into Dakota and then provide an English translation of course, and put them on a website for, uh, the students to have access, to listen, to and read and kind of make it accessible to all of our Dakota people.
Nan
That seems related to sovereignty as well.
Šišóka
yeah, yeah, exactly.
Nan
...kind of, this is our national language, we’re in charge of it.
Šišóka
That's true. I think you know, but on the other side of it too, is, uh, sometimes our people can be, uh, protective of their own community, uh, to the detriment of the Dakota nation as a whole. And so sometimes they'll say, well, you're not from this reservation, you're from that reservation. And because you're not from here, we don't want to help you.
And so we thought, well, how can we kind of get past that mentality? And so we want to record all these speakers and make it available to all of our Dakota people, no matter where they're from, you know, so it's public access to all of our people.
We collaborate with the Sisseton-Wahpeton College. Uh, the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate has a lot of fluent speakers left; I wouldn't say it's overwhelming amount, but you know, they have a lot left and we're, uh, we're working with, uh, the tribal college. They have a number of fluent speakers they work with.
I feel like, you know, this, this is one small step, to kind of collaborate with the tribal college because a lot of times people go oh, well you're a big university, you don't, we don't need to partner with anybody, but actually, it makes us, uh, kind of like more community-oriented and kind of shows that we can work with these tribal partners in a good way. And, a lot of it too has to do with, uh, righting historical wrongs. Uh, the University of Minnesota, uh, had, uh, a collection of, um, human remains that were Dakota for a number of decades. And, uh, so the university of Minnesota has a lot to make up for it. They sit on Dakota land and, uh, the University of Minnesota, Morris Campus used to be a boarding school and there was human remains discovered there.
Nan
I didn't know that!
Šišóka
yeah.
Nan
I'm from Minneapolis. So this is all I went to the University of Minnesota, actually.
Šišóka
Yeah. And so they have a lot to make up for in my mind; that's my personal opinion.
Nan
So do you feel like there are challenges that you face when you're like coming from your location at the University of Minnesota and trying to reach out to the tribal colleges or people who are located elsewhere because of this historic legacy of the University of Minnesota?
Šišóka
That’s uh, that's a big issue because, you know, first of all, I work at the University of Minnesota and people know of all the things that the university has done to our people. And so it is a challenge to recruit people to come take our classes.
But I think, you know, uh, they're seeing now that, uh, myself and Neil we're kind of, uh, leading the charge on, uh, kind of trying to right those wrongs, you know, uh, bring a little justice here to this situation. But the university is a big institution and it's hard to get things done quickly. So it was change is very slow. and our people would like to see it happen faster. So that, that can be a little bit of an impediment. And, you know, there's a little bit of mentality in our community of “if you're not from here, then we don't want to work with you.”
So I think, you know, we really need to kind of break those barriers down and just plow right through them. And I think this project working with the tribal college is going to be part of that, show that “hey, it doesn't matter who you are, where you're from. We're going to just like work on this project and we're going to all create something good.”
Because, you know, my mentality is I want to leave the language movement better off than when I started. And when I started, there was not very many resources. I mean, there was some that's true in thank goodness to the people who developed those. So they left it better off than when they started. And so my mentality is I want to leave this better than when I started.
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I always think of it, like if we don't do it, who will. It's really up to us as Dakota, Lakota people to keep our own language alive. And if we don't do it, nobody else will.
Lisa
Shit, Nan. Minnesota has a campus on the site of a boarding school… This is unbelievable.
Nan
Yeah, could you hear the surprise in my voice? It just makes so, so explicit that the university is not really separate from the boarding school history
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Lisa
And it actually brings up a larger question I have, which is how exactly this project works in terms of the university's involvement. So often when universities get involved in projects like this, they want the feel-good PR but they still want to exert ownership and control.
Nan
Yeah, great point. Šišóka and the team have put a lot of thought into how to do this project. They’re doing it in partnership with the Sisseton-Wahpeton tribal college which is located on the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota, and that’s where they’re recording the elders. So, working there means the tribe has a say from the get-go. And the University of Minnesota will not “own” the tapes, or any Dakota curriculum materials that come out of this project. Any Dakota person who wants access will be able to get it, but there will be a screening process for people who want these resources but are not Dakota. And the whole thing’s funded by a Mellon grant specifically designed to build collaborative and equitable partnerships..
Lisa
That is so important. I mean, this is the kind of model I think so many of us in higher ed are looking for. I mean, how do universities meaningfully engage with communities without being extractive? Right? How do universities make reparations for the violence of settler-colonialism and white supremacy? This is like a project that's actually beginning to do that!
Nan
Yeah, I think so too. Because this is NOT a language class the way your colleagues teach French or Japanese. This is really is about centering native ways of knowing — and language is integral to that because so much of a whole worldview exists in language. You know, right now I’m seeing so much “Indigenous Studies” work showing up like it’s an academic buzzword right now—but Native American studies programs have been building a space for this for years, without enough funding, I have to say.
And the kind of transformation Šišóka is seeking can’t be built by white professors who want more lines on their C.V.s; it requires native people being in positions of power in the university, it requires some significant cash, and it also requires a real institutional commitment to indigenous communities and their visions and their needs.
I got a feel for this talking to Šišóka and Raine-- they really have a generational idea of learning and change. So, for example, Šišóka told me he only speaks Dakota to his youngest child. It’s cute, but it’s also really critical--Šišóka emphasizes that there have to be “little Dakota speakers” for the language to survive and thrive.
And Raine…she’s on the same wavelength.
Raine
Actually when I was going to the university, um, I had a daughter, and you know she didn’t start talking, like any talking, until she was three. So she was going to Wicoie, the Dakota immersion preschool in Minneapolis, and then she went to, uh, Bdote, the Dakota immersion school there. So we were both learning the language at the same time and she was definitely more advanced than me in kindergarten. She was in kindergarten and she was teaching me words. So, um, so she was just quiet and I was like, does she even talk? And then when she started talking, she was speaking two languages. She's awesome.
She likes to say she forgot. So one time I was talking to her and I was like, you know, um, saying something to her in Dakota, and then I'd say it in English. She was like, why are you saying everything twice? I'm like, I don't know. I just thought you didn't understand [laughs].
Learning Dakota, you can't separate our Dakota worldview from our language or our culture from our language. There's things that we don't say in Dakota that you say in English and there's things in English you don't say in Dakota. So those things don't, like, translate straight across. And so there's a different way of thinking about things. And sometimes you have to like think, uh, pre-contact before, you know, before there was, uh, America, you know, before all this. I feel like when you learn Dakota to you, you're just learning our people. You're learning our lifeways; you're learning our thoughts. For myself, I mean I think my speaking abilities in Dakota really improved once I started working with fluent elders and really spent time with them and hearing them and just like the rhythm and cadence of the way they talk. Um, it really helped me as a speaker to be more confident.
I think of Dakota as painting a picture. So you're talking about a boy on the hill, and then he has a horse, and then, and then what? You're just kind of waiting for these characters to do something.
So it's a different way of imagining or thinking of the language. And it's like, wow! How do I explain that in English?
Nan
That would be so challenging, but, uh, that's very, that's very intriguing, you know, to think about how much my brain has been shaped by the structure of European languages, you know, subject, object, verb, you know, and that grammar. And it sounds like this is a very, very different way of, kind of conveying an idea or an experience from one person to another.
Raine
I almost had to unlearn the linguistic part of Dakota to be a better speaker. [laughs] Um, in the beginning, I, I used, like, the reading and writing system and, like, the linguistic rules as a crutch. And so like when I would imagine Dakota or hear it, I would like, be picturing words and my notes and things like that. And then like, at some point, I remember I wasn't picturing notes. I wasn't picturing words. I was picturing the things that they were talking about
Our elders, always to tell us to speak from the heart, you know? And, um, that took me a long time to learn. Cause I think I learned it from a different perspective than just learning it from as a baby, you know?
I first started working with language was back in, um, maybe the early 2000s. I had an aunt, a tȟuŋwíŋ, um, Yvonne Leaf, um, who was learning her language again. So as an older woman, She was like in her seventies and she was learning, um, her childhood language again, because she had moved away and had a family and life and lived in New York and she came back and so she was learning her language again and really actively learning.
She would have me drive her to these language symposiums because she didn't drive at night. And I was like, yeah, okay, sure. You know, and I would stay for the whole thing and listen to people talking Dakota about Dakota. And, uh, later on, and maybe a couple years later after I'm finished with art school,
I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do, but she was like, you know, I want you to be on our board for, this nonprofit. She started called Dakota Wicohan, and it's preserving the Dakota way of life and language revitalization. At that time, I think there was around seventeen first language speakers in Minnesota, so I got to spend time with these elders, but not really so much, um, learning the language, but just spending time with them as you know, khųšis and uåkaånas, the grandmas and grandpas, you know, that they were.
Nan
Oh, that's fantastic. Wow! That's really very moving. I think that there's something that elders, I'm talking about like my elders, you know, they put their eye on you… [laughs]
Raine
Definitely! Yeah, and that's a very Dakota way, you know, of intergenerational learning and, you know, looking to our elders and getting direction and guidance from them. I mean, that's part of our way of life, you know?
They have their whole life to gain all this knowledge, wisdom, understanding, insight. And when you're young, you need that. And, you know, sometimes even today, you know, not all of our elders grow up to be Elders. Sometimes they're just “olders,” you know, but still in their life, they still have something, that we can learn from, even if it's to learn how not to be, you know, like that's a lesson. So I think, um, no matter how they've lived their life like eventually, their life becomes a resource for us to learn from.
Our ancestors knew that you know. They knew that you know, khų́ši would teach the mom how to be a better mom, you know, and have the patience to play with the little ones or, you know, so our family unit was more than just the platonic unit. It was extended family, you know, grandma, grandpa, aunties, uncles, you know, like these people were a really active role in our, you know, families
I think part of language revitalization is bringing those kinship roles back into our communities, um, because they were lost because of boarding school, just like our language was lost because of boarding school.
Nan
I've been getting the feeling that learning, uh, Dakota language is really kind of a journey. and that it can take you to unexpected places. And so I was wondering what has surprised you about learning and teaching Dakota language?
Raine
I think as Dakota people learning our own language, sometimes it's that, um, generational trauma or the trauma of losing our language within our own family, or even your own trauma that you experienced, um, of somebody laughing at you and making fun of you. And like, you're like, oh man, this is my language. I, I should know it, you know, and like all these different pieces that kind of way can weigh you down.
Uh, one day I was just feeling really sad and heavy about language and, and just struggling. And my tȟuŋwíŋ Yvonne Leaf, she would always say, we need to be kind and gentle with each other when it comes to language
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and she would have this little voice kind and gentle. And I hear her voice to this day when I teach…
We need nurturing environments.
And, and I feel like that's something that we've kind of overlooked because we want to, to fit language into this box of like, um, teaching it in a classroom, but also like it was the classroom or the boarding school that took away our language in such a traumatic way. It's really hard to fit it back into that box to bring it back.
Let's not picture ourselves in a classroom. Let's picture ourselves as people talking to each other in relationship and community. Cause that's what we need is relationship. Language is all about relationship and it's all about community.
Credits
Lisa
Collegeland is produced by Craig Eley (EE-lee) and Jade Iseri (EYE-siri) Ramos (RAH-mos). Danyel Ferrari (DaeN-YEHL fer-AH-ree) is our researcher and publicist. Our theme music is by Josh Wilson. Other music in the show comes from Blue Dot Sessions. And the show is hosted by me, Lisa Levenstein, along with Nan Enstad.
A special thanks to North Carolina Humanities and the Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies for their support.