Dakota lyrics invade rap song (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Dakota lyrics invade rap song
http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2005/09/13/news/state/102069.txt

AGENCY VILLAGE, S.D. (AP) - Tammy DeCoteau devotes much of her time
thinking about how she can coax children into doing something that came
naturally to their great-grandparents: speak in their native Dakota
language.

Decoteau has been the driving force behind a series of efforts to expose
young people on the Lake Traverse Reservation to their ancestral
language in appealing ways.

Those efforts have included recording popular children's songs and
publishing illustrated phrase books and nursery rhymes in Dakota Sioux.

The latest project is a collaboration of young and old: recording a rap
song with Dakota lyrics and widely distributing copies.

"We're just branching out in another genre," said DeCoteau, who is the
director of American Indian language programs for the Association of
American Indian Affairs.

"We're trying to get the language where you wouldn't ordinarily see it
through music or games, anywhere we can get their attention," she said.

DeCoteau and others at Sisseton-Wahpeton College in Sisseton who were
involved in the project, believe "Wicozani Mitawa" or "My Life," a song
about a young man's struggles, is the first rap song recorded in the
Dakota language.

More than 250 compact discs containing the song, recorded in late
August, have been distributed free of charge to young people on the
reservation, with its tribal headquarters at Agency Village near
Sisseton.

The popularity of rap music among young adults and children made it an
obvious vehicle to kindle interest in Dakota, now spoken fluently by a
dwindling number of the tribe's elders.

"The parents of these young children listen to rap," DeCoteau said.

The recording project was sparked by a conversation DeCoteau had with
one of her nephews, Tristan Eastman, who writes and performs rap songs.

"She asked me if I could write a rap song for kids," Eastman said. "I
asked her if she meant nursery school kids. She said, 'No, people your
age.'"

Eastman, who is 20, estimates "97 percent" of kids on the reservation
listen to rap or hip-hop music.

"A lot of kids want to live in the hip-hop culture and do what they see
on TV," he said. "It's breaking us from who we are."

One of the song's messages, from the point of view of a young man who
fights despair, is to embrace native pride and stand up for traditional
culture.

"The farther we get from our languages, the more confused our young
people get about who they are and their place in the world," said
William Harjo Lone Fight, president of Sisseton-Wahpeton College.

"In our language is embedded the instruction on how we treat one another
and how we survive," he said.

Rap music was like a foreign language to the elders who helped with the
translation into Dakota.

"The elders didn't have much experience with rap," DeCoteau said. She
had them listen to an English version, with a piano accompaniment and
pulsing drum beat. "They figured rap wasn't all that bad," she said.

Orsen and Edwina Bernard were the lead translators of Eastman's lyrics.
To capture the spirit, Orsen crossed the generational divide.

"I had to think where this young fellow was coming from," he said. It
wasn't all that difficult; all he had to do was remember his own
struggles as a young man.

Bernard, in his 60s, recalled his sense of isolation while serving in
the military in Germany, the only Dakota on his base.

Eastman hopes other American Indian youths will record popular songs in
their native languages, a practice he believes will spread.

The Sisseton-Wahpeton tribe, which has made restoring its language a top
priority, also has a program that works with parents and children to
foster speaking in Dakota at home.

The tribe first turned to language restoration as a way to help fight
the rise in teenage delinquency. The language program started by having
fluent elders visit the community's day-care center every day to speak
Dakota with the preschoolers.

Next came a phrase book, and ultimately the multimedia projects. The
tribal college has turned a small classroom into a recording studio,
with a computer and sound-mixing board.

Dakota words are sprouting everywhere. The aisles and display cases at
the convenience store in Agency Village have Dakota words for common
items, such as "mni" for water and "asanpi" for milk.

Large navy blue pennants with Dakota words to reinforce important values
hang from the airy main corridor of the school. One banner, for
instance, read: "Wausinda: showing empathy for all living things."

Dakota language instruction is part of the curriculum of both K-12 and
the tribal college. The tribal council is considering making Dakota its
official language, and has channeled about $100,000 of its casino
revenue into language restoration in recent years, said Harjo Lone
Fight.

"The sense of urgency has increased since the language-speaking
population has decreased," he said. "Thirty years ago, there seemed to
be an endless supply."

The last census found 3 percent of the tribe's 11,000 members speak
Dakota, DeCoteau said. Most fluent speakers are elderly.

Ethnologue, an online linguistic database, said the 1990 census
identified 15,355 Dakota speakers in the United States, most of them
located in the Dakotas, Minnesota and Nebraska. Another 5,000 live in
Canada, in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Olivia Eastman, Tristan Eastman's grandmother, helped translate and edit
the rap song's lyrics.

"The health of a culture is measured by its language," she said.

Her grandson, who recently moved to Morton, Minn., hopes his rap song
will catch on.

"I would love to hear another person singing my song," he said.