American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Losing a Native language is like losing a relative. It is gone forever, never to return except in fond memories of words and phrases handed down by parents and grandparents but only scarcely used or understood by the current, bereaved generation. Gone the language, gone the tradition. The message is that memories of past speech are not enough to sustain a tribe, a tradition, a people. We need to talk. Voices resound on all the Lakota reservations: “We are losing our language. We are afraid because as goes the language, so goes the culture.” Is it really a dilemma? Yes. A recent one? Hardly. I heard these sentiments for the first time sixty years ago at Pine Ridge. Elderly men and women criticized the younger generation: “They don’t even know their language. They don’t even know their relatives.” A foreshadowing of the future, perhaps; a Lakota prophecy, maybe. But presently the reality of a Lakota Oyate without its own language has surfaced accompanied by a near hysteria over how to delay what is perceived to be THE END. Recently I received two announcements. The first was an invitation to a conference on language-immersion classes being held by the staff of Sitting Bull College, which is located on the Standing Rock Reservation. Sacheen Whitetail Cross, tribal education manager of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, heads the conference.