Master-Apprentice Language Learning Program

FAIN: ZR-256728-18

Sitting Bull College (Fort Yates, ND 58538-9721)
Yuliya Manyakina (Project Director: February 2017 to August 2021)
Sunshine Archambault-Carlow (Project Director: August 2021 to July 2024)

A three-year-long Master Apprentice Language Learning Program for six Standing Rock Sioux Tribe members.

Lakól’iyapi Wahópi (“Lakota Language Nest”)/Wichákini Owáyawa (“New Life for the People School”) of Sitting Bull College (SBC) and Standing Rock Project LAUNCH initiative in Fort Yates, North Dakota, seek a $150,000 Creating Humanities Communities Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund a 3-year Master Apprentice Language Learning Program to develop 6 proficient Lakota language speakers who are between the ages of 19 and 45 years old. This program would be used to support Standing Rock’s important humanities goal of revitalizing the Lakota/Dakota language, specifically by creating and piloting a sustainability strategy for developing second-language speakers of Lakota/Dakota for the Lakota Language Nest, Project LAUNCH, and for the greater Standing Rock community. This program will make the language more visible to the community and foster a culture in which Lakota and Dakota, as spoken languages, regain a central role in daily life.