When Joe Bendickson was growing up, first on the Lake Traverse Reservation near the Minnesota-South Dakota border and then in St. Paul, he did not speak Dakota, his ancestral tongue. Few did.

MANKATO — Jan Red Owl Bruce stood under a Land of Memories canopy listening to an emcee speaking in Dakota to greet grand entry participants at the Mahkato Wacipi. “I understand it, but I don’t speak ...

FORT TOTTEN, N.D.-Inside a classroom on the Spirit Lake Nation reservation, a group of Dakota students are dedicating the next two years of their lives to preserving their language and strengthening ...

STANDING ROCK SIOUX RESERVATION — Sunshine Carlow is racing to build a generation of fluent Lakota and Dakota language speakers before it’s too late. Carlow, 40, helped lead a three-week Dakota/Lakota ...

MORTON, Minn. – From a park picnic table a woman named Ruby watches her 12-year-old granddaughter, Shayla, answer a reporter’s questions. They are mostly one-word answers. Are you having fun learning ...

Marilyn Allen, who is part Dakota and Lakota, looks through a Dakota-English dictionary during Dakota language class at Minnesota State University. Allen said she is taking the class because she wants ...

Vanessa Goodthunder is the director of C̣aƞṡayapi Waḳaƞyeża Owayawa Ṭi (Lower Sioux Children Are Sacred School), a Dakota-Immersion Early Head Start and Preschool. A member of the Lower Sioux Indian ...

MORTON, Minn. - Last fall, the Lower Sioux Indian Community lost Trulo Columbus -- the tribe's last fluent speaker of the Dakota language. Deaths like his to Vanessa Goodthunder represent the ...

A new University of Minnesota Living Learning Community (LLC) called the Dakota Language House will launch next fall to advance and support students’ learning of the Dakota language. Radius Apartments ...

MANKATO, Minn. (AP) — Minnesota State University, Mankato will offer Dakota language and culture courses beginning this fall. University president Richard Davenport says the courses will help preserve ...

MINNEAPOLIS — Introduced in fall 2023, the University of Minnesota’s new Dakota language major is part of the movement throughout Dakota communities to increase the number of Dakota language speakers ...

Sure, you can buy Icelandic Scrabble, Croatian Scrabble, even Slovenian Scrabble – if you look hard enough. After all, those languages have entire nations of speakers. But who’d want Scrabble for a ...