Senate speech printed in Lakota (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Senate speech printed in Lakota
http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2004/07/24/news/state/state04.txt

WASHINGTON — Tunkasila Mila Hanska Oyate ki lel un gluwitapi.

No, that wasn't a typographical error covering two-thirds of page S8579
of the Congressional Record published Friday.

It was a speech Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., had
delivered in English in the Senate on Thursday and had printed in the
record in both English and Lakota, an American Indian language.

It is unusual for a foreign language to appear in the record, the
official chronicle of remarks made in the House and Senate since 1876.
It is rarer still for the comments to be in an American Indian
language.

"I'm certainly not aware of anything like this happening earlier in the
Congressional Record," Senate Historian Richard Baker said of an Indian
language being printed in the daily publication.

The Lakota words at the beginning of Daschle's speech mean, "President,
Americans are united." Senators usually open their floor comments by
addressing the senator who is presiding over the chamber, technically
the Senate's president pro tempore or acting president.

In his comments, Daschle did not mention that he is in a tight
re-election race this fall in a state whose population is 8 percent
American Indian. The Lakota are a branch of the Great Sioux nation.

Daschle used his speech to hail the "code talkers" of World War II.
Those were troops from the Navajo, Lakota and about 15 other American
Indian nations who sent messages in their own languages during World
War I and World War II that the enemy could not understand.

Daschle said one way to honor the code talkers would be try preserving
Indian languages, which are rapidly fading away. Only half the 300
Indian languages once used in what is now the United States are still
spoken, and the rest are expected to vanish in decades, he said.

It costs $611 per page to publish the record each day, distribute it and
place it on the Internet, said Government Printing Office spokeswoman
Veronica Meter. About 7,000 copies are printed daily.

Meter said she did not know if the record has been printed before in a
Native American language.