The Lakota language preservation grant is funded by the Administration for Native Americans (ANA). The grant helps the Medicine Root District reimagine what Lakota language instruction looks like for both students and the school. While the school will continue offering Lakota language instruction to students during the school day, it will be supplemented with an enriched curriculum for a pilot group of students. This group will be formed from elementary students who live in a home with a fluent speaker. The grant will support home-based language instruction.
Rekindling the intergenerational transfer of language will take effort and this grant sets the foundation. The grant, funded for three years, will begin with a comprehensive survey of fluent speakers throughout the Medicine Root District. The survey will seek to uncover some of the reasons that Lakota speakers has been steadily declining for generations, specifically in Kyle and the surrounding communities.
An initial survey, conducted in 2015, identified more than 200 fluent speakers in Medicine Root District. Little Wound now has the opportunity to follow up with these speakers and learn how families pass on the Lakota language. This will empower Little Wound to develop and support language instruction that takes place in homes - a service that will be offered during the final two years of the grant. Expanded after-school immersion programming for elementary school students will also be offered.
For more information about the grant, contact Matilda Montileaux at 455-2353.