Expanding the Standing Rock Dakota/Lakota Language Archive and Local Research Capacity

FAIN: PD-290079-22

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (Fort Yates, ND 58538-8528)
Nacole Walker (Project Director: May 2022 to present)

A project documenting two Indigenous dialects of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Lakota and Western Dakota, for inclusion in a comprehensive, interactive, and fully searchable digital archive of recordings and texts.

[Prepared by NEH staff] Since 2018, the Standing Rock Language and Culture Institute has been building an interactive, fully searchable digital archive of recordings and texts made in fluent Western Dakota and Lakota, two dialects of the Indigenous language of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. These dialects are extremely threatened, as there are currently estimated to be fewer than 180 individuals across Standing Rock who speak Lakota or Western Dakota fluently, almost all of whom are over the age of 65, yet there is a growing interest in restoring the dialects as everyday languages. This project would employ two language experts to produce recordings documenting the language dialects as well as draw upon the present digital archive, build capacity for an archive training program, and publish data on a customized Mukurtu site with physical storage at Sitting Bull College.