LakˈOta Oyate: Modern Impacts of Settler Colonialism Within Language Revitalization Across Lakota Country

This project examines the effects that settler colonialism has had on the language revitalization of Lakota (and the dialects of Dakota and Nakoda more broadly). This research was collected through a multigenerational learning pedagogy, which was traditionally practiced by Lakota people prior to the Reservation Era, and this pedagogy is firmly rooted in oral traditions and experiential learning. Lakota is an endangered Siouan language with ancestral homelands covering most of the western Northern Plains region (~180,000 tribally enrolled citizens today). Settler Colonialism has impacted every facet of indigenous peoples’ lives across Turtle Island, also known as North America. This project will detail briefly some of the settler colonial policies that have most affected Lakota Country, such as the development of reservations and residential boarding schools, and how these policies have deeply impacted current Lakota society. This project aims to explore the “pseudo-linguistics” of Lakota, and Dakota to some extent, that was developed by European missionaries and how these missionaries’ roles within “documenting” the language has hindered the language revitalization movement today. Written resources of Lakota language are mostly based on the descriptive grammars that these missionaries developed and how this fact perpetuates settler colonial violence within the modern-day Lakota language revitalization community. This leaves the community in desperate need for a language curriculum based in traditional teachings. There will be a discussion of land-based language curriculum and how this kind of curriculum development is taking place within the specific location of Lakota Youth Development, a native non-profit organization located in the Milks Camp Community of the Rosebud Indian Reservation of South Dakota