Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:04 — 25.7MB) | Embed
Host: Shawn Spruce
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s experience is a cautionary tale for tribes working with outsiders to help preserve their language. Tribal members worked with the Lakota Language Consortium for years, recording elders, developing workshops, and translating books. When the tribe wanted to utilize the materials they’d worked on, they discovered they were copyrighted and controlled by a non-Native entrepreneur and tribal members would have to purchase the books and other materials. The tribe has since taken the rare step of banishing the organization. Today on Native America Calling, Shawn Spruce speaks with Graham Lee Brewer (Cherokee), investigative reporter for NBC News; Alex FireThunder (Oglala Lakota), Lakota language instructor, musician, and incoming deputy director for the Lakota Language Consortium; Tipiziwin Tolman (Standing Rock Sioux), Indigenous language revitalization student and board member on the Lakota Language Consortium; Jennifer Weston (Standing Rock Sioux), co-author of the resolution to ban the Lakota Language Consortium from the tribe; and Waniya Locke (Ahtna Dene, Lakota/Dakota, and Anishinaabe), community organizer, Indigenous doula, former Lakota Language teacher, and transcriber of Lakota language.
Break 1 music: Song of Encouragement (song) Porcupine Singers (artist) Alowanpi – Songs Of Honoring – Lakota Classics: Past & Present, Vol. 1 (album)
Break 2 Music: Indians Never Die (song) Black Belt Eagle Scout (artist) Mother of My Children (album)
