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ROCHESTER, Minn. (AP) — Today, Dakota — the native language of the Prairie Island Indian Neighborhood — isn’t broadly spoken.
However the tribe is attempting to vary that and the pandemic has provided them an uncommon alternative to take action: by bringing language courses on-line, they’ve been in a position to attain extra members than ever earlier than.
In particular person courses have usually attracted a handful of individuals, stated tribe communications supervisor Rayanna Lennes.
Utilizing know-how like Zoom to show reside courses, and archiving them on-line, provides far-flung tribal members a chance to reconnect with their language — and one another, Minnesota Public Radio Information reported.
“It’s an hour a day, three days every week that we’re all on, and we get to work together with one another, and it’s this sense of neighborhood,” stated Lennes, who participated in a category earlier this month over Zoom.
That features Kim Campbell who lives in Washington state. She stated the courses are a spotlight throughout her in any other case boring weeks caught at dwelling.
And so they’re a reminder that her tribe, who’re descendants of the Mdewakanton Band of Japanese Dakota, a few of whom nonetheless reside on the reservation close to Crimson Wing, is prospering.
“It simply makes you’re feeling related to your neighborhood. It signifies that we’re nonetheless right here,” Campbell stated throughout a Zoom class earlier this month.
That session targeted on giving instructions — helpful stuff whenever you’re caught at dwelling with some unruly kids.
Instructor Arthur Lockwood went over some fundamentals like “go over there.”
“Heciya iyaya,” Lockwood pronounces slowly for the category earlier than they offer it a attempt.
However the class isn’t nearly memorizing and repeating new phrases. Lockwood focuses on intonation, context and nuance — like when it’s OK to make use of a extra informal model of a phrase.
“That form of stuff all comes with the consolation of the language, ?” Lockwood informed the category.
For many college students on this class, Dakota isn’t snug, as a result of studying it was not one thing a lot of them did as kids. The language chain was damaged many a long time earlier when Dakota kids have been despatched to boarding faculty. There, they have been punished for talking Dakota.
Over time, fluent audio system turned sparse. Those that knew the language have been scared to show their kids the way to converse it for worry they might be ostracized, too.
Lockwood solely heard his older kin converse Dakota right here and there as he grew up. At 17, he began studying the language in earnest.
“I requested my grandma to get me a dictionary. I began to check,” Lockwood stated. “A phrase a day, I’d take out of that dictionary.”
Since so few individuals converse Dakota, observe alternatives stay scarce. That’s the true problem in maintaining the language alive amongst Prairie Island members, stated Johnny Johnson, a tribal council member.
“Once I was rising up, I heard it on a regular basis once we have been going to all people’s home,” he stated. “Now, it’s like the children are studying however the mother and father aren’t studying. It’s very arduous for them to talk or discuss to them with out another person studying together with them.”
Johnson stated taking the teachings on-line and making them extra broadly out there protects towards the language fading from reminiscence.
For his half, Lockwood stated he solely has one aim for the category.
“I hope that I work myself out of a job,” he stated.
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