Revitalizing state heritage

Toddlers are at play in a Minneapolis language immersion classroom. Using only his new Dakota language skills 3 -year-old Ohiyesa Long Crow, whose name means “the winner,” tries to coerce a toy truck out of his teacher’s hands. Phoebe Bendickson, 2, gleefully shouts in Dakota as she catches a big red ball. Her blond curls bounce up and down, indicative of her Scandinavian, besides her Dakota, ancestry.

Their teacher, Sheldon Noel, is a full-blooded Dakota from the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation in Manitoba, Canada. Like many Dakota, his ancestors fled Minnesota during the 1862 U.S.-Dakota Conflict when they were put into concentration camps or forced from the state. Children were forbidden to speak their native tongue.

Eight of Noel’s Canadian family members still speak fluent Dakota. By comparison, there are only eight people in the entire state of Minnesota who can fluently speak Dakota, and many of them are age 70 or older.

Now a partnership of cultural organizations hopes to rebuild Dakota speakers within Minnesota.

“We’re talking about revitalizing a near lost language. This is a huge deal,” said Annamarie Hill-Kleinhans, executive director of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council. The project is being carefully watched by linguists internationally, she said.

The council received a $250,000 appropriation for the 2010-2011 biennium from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, earmarked for grants to support Dakota and Ojibwe language revitalization programs.

The Wicoie Nandagikendan program is for Dakota language classes and the Niigaane program is for teaching the Ojibwe language. There are an estimated 300 state residents who speak fluent Ojibwe.

House Legacy Funding Division Chairman Dean Urdahl (R-Grove City) sponsored the original legislation to provide funding for the immersion programs. “I’m a historian. I believe in preserving history,” Urdahl said.

Rep. Karen Clark (DFL-Mpls) is one of the legislators who supports the program. One immersion classroom is located in her district.

“We’re dealing with the ravages of genocide. This is an opportunity to give people back their own culture. When we lose the wisdom and knowledge of the Dakota people, we are impaired,” Clark said.

There are about 4,000 Dakota in four federally-recognized Minnesota communities: the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community; the Prairie Island, Indian Community; the Lower Sioux, near Redwood Falls; and the Upper Sioux near Granite Falls. The original Dakota Community, established by treaty in 1851, was located along a 10-mile wide strip of land on both sides of the Minnesota River.

Noel studied political science and philosophy in college so he could return to the reservation and work on behalf of the Dakota people. But when he learned about the Wicoie Nandagikendan program, “I put myself in those shoes,” he said. “Language teaches you about the land, culture, a way of being in the world. When you take that away from them, what do you have?”

About 30 preschoolers are enrolled in the immersion program. The hope is that in 20 years, the number of people fluent in the language will grow and the language will become self-sustaining over time.

Dakota is a gender-based language. Words can take on different prefixes or endings depending upon whether a male or female is speaking. Noel was raised in Dakota tradition by his grandparents, so he heard both versions of speech. Although he understands both variances, he doesn’t teach the female form in the classroom.

“We can talk to each other and understand each other, but in our culture we just don’t do that out of respect,” Noel said.

Phoebe’s mother, Anna Bendickson, volunteers as a female instructor in her daughter’s classroom. Her husband, Joe, teaches Dakota language at the University of Minnesota. She is of 100 percent Scandinavian descent. “I can memorize lists but this constant flow of narrative is better,” she said of the immersion program, which has resulted in students scoring higher on academic testing for kindergarten than their single-language counterparts.

Getting the program off the ground was challenging, say organizers. It was the first time the council offered grants, so they sought technical support. Fluent speakers were not licensed teachers, so a licensed teacher must oversee their work. Organizers began calling throughout the Midwest and Canada to family or friends to assemble dictionaries of words. Now the challenge becomes adding classes and teachers in the primary and secondary classrooms as these preschoolers advance through school.

“If we revitalize this language, we’re going to start with those kids and although it will always be in question whether or not it is the true and authentic (language), it will be a good thriving language that we have and we will have revitalized that,” Hill-Kleinhans said.

There is also the constant search for funding. Prior to receiving Arts and Cultural Heritage funds, the group used a small federal allocation along with foundation money. They hope annual appropriations for the 25-year life of the Legacy fund will sustain the program, according to Margaret Boyer, former executive director of the Alliance of Early Childhood Professionals.

“We would love it. It’s going to take a whole generation to reclaim the language,” Boyer said. “People are realizing the only thing that’s going to get this language spoken again is daily immersion.”