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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, along with four tribal colleges, announced Voices of Our Ancestors, a Dakota language training program. In August 2017 the two-year program will begin in five ...

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 ...

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 ...