[Fwd: [Possible SPAM] Upper Sioux Dakota speakers honored]

[Mona Smith]

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Subject: 	[Possible SPAM] Upper Sioux Dakota speakers honored
Date: 	Mon, 3 Mar 2008 12:01:14 -0600
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*‘We need to hold on to our language’*

*By Deb Gau*

UPPER SIOUX COMMUNITY — Some gifts don’t last forever. In the case of 
languages, even the richest cultural heritage only lives as long as the 
people who speak it. Time may be running out for Native American 
languages like Dakota, speakers at an honor ceremony Saturday evening said.

“Looking at my elders here, less than five years ago we would have 
needed about two more tables up here,” Upper Sioux Community Chairman 
Kevin Jensvold said, acknowledging the table where the remaining six 
Dakota speakers in the community sat.

The dinner and ceremony at Prairie’s Edge Convention Center celebrated 
the Upper Sioux elders who grew up speaking Dakota. Honorees Genevieve 
LaBatte, Dean Blue, Evangeline Lesko, Carrie Schommer, Harry Running 
Walker and Joan Pasillas, as well as speakers at the ceremony, called 
for community efforts to keep their language alive.

“Language is your identity. It’s who you are,” said guest speaker 
Phyllis Red Day.

Only a few generations ago, life in the Upper Sioux Community was 
carried out completely in Dakota, speakers said — from the hymns at 
church to the conversation at the grocery store. But as white culture 
became more and more dominant, people stopped speaking in Dakota, and 
more importantly stopped speaking it to their children.

“It was like turning off a light,” Jensvold said. “They did this to help 
us survive. But now it is time for us to survive on our own.”

Speaking in English might be the key to getting an education or making a 
living today, said honoree Carrie Schommer, but it loses the perspective 
of the Dakota way of life.

“The language has so much more meaning than in (English),” said 
Schommer, who spent many years teaching Dakota herself. “You could find 
all the things in the English dictionary, but Dakota people could 
express some things so much more in the language.”

Event organizer Chris Mato Nunpa said he had wanted to acknowledge the 
elder speakers, “before they’re gone.” The loss of indigenous languages 
is a problem being faced by cultures around the world, Mato Nunpa said, 
and definitely in North America.

“These people are treasures for the Upper Sioux Community,” Mato Nunpa said.

Mato Nunpa suggested that immersive language camps, where children spend 
time in an environment speaking nothing but Dakota, would be the most 
effective way to teach the language.

Several of the speakers at the ceremony acknowledged the idea of 
language camps, or at least organized efforts to pass Dakota language on 
to present generations, as one possibility for the community.

The idea made sense, said guest speaker Mike Simon.

When the honorees were growing up, Simon said, “they didn’t have books, 
where they say, ‘let’s learn about colors and about the animals.’

“They just talked. All of us learned that way.”

Honoree Harry Running Walker said teaching shouldn’t just be directed at 
children, but at whole families.

“I would like some of their mothers and dads to learn also,” he said.

Honoree Dean Blue said it was good to see the importance of Dakota 
language and culture recognized, but he was cautious about how effective 
efforts to preserve Dakota language would be at first.

It’s impossible to escape the influence of white culture and the English 
language, he said.

“It will be a long, slow process,” Blue said.

The main thing, Mato Nunpa said, was to start some serious discussion 
about preserving Dakota language. Hopefully, that process had already 
started.

“We need to think how — I don’t like the word ‘preserve,’ but how we can 
continue to hold on to our language here at Upper Sioux,” Jensvold told 
the audience.


-- 

Mona M. Smith

Producer/Director/Media Artist

_Allies: media/art <http://www.alliesmediaart.com/>_

_The Ded Unkunpi Projects <http://www.alliesmediaart.com/>_

4720 32nd Avenue South

Minneapolis, MN 55406-3816

612.721.8055

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