Oyate Nipi Kte (The People Shall Live)
The mission of Oyate Nipi Kte (The People Shall Live) is to support the recovery of Dakota traditional knowledge including language, spirituality, and life-ways; develop initiatives for sustainable living based on a Dakota environment ethic; facilitate an understanding of the harmful effects of colonization; and empower individuals and collective communities to more effectively resist colonization and strengthen Dakota Sovereignty. The Akicita Scouting Program, funded by the language grants has two phases; traditional and cultural teachings through language immersion and documenting this knowledge by publishing original resources for Dakota language programs. The Akicita Teca Summer Scouting Program will engage youth in activities of gardening, traditional games, canoeing, and monthly ceremonies, as well as activity camps.
These languages embody irreplaceable worldviews. They express, reflect, and maintain communal connections and ways of understanding the world. Deeper than the disuse of vocabulary or grammar, the loss of an indigenous language is destruction of a complex system for ordering the relationships among people and the natural world, for solving social problems, and connecting people to something beyond themselves.
The mission of Oyate Nipi Kte (The People Shall Live) is to support the recovery of Dakota traditional knowledge including language, spirituality, and life-ways; develop initiatives for sustainable living based on a Dakota environment ethic; facilitate an understanding of the harmful effects of colonization; and empower individuals and collective communities to more effectively resist colonization and strengthen Dakota Sovereignty. The Akicita Scouting Program, funded by the language grants has two phases; traditional and cultural teachings through language immersion and documenting this knowledge by publishing original resources for Dakota language programs. The Akicita Teca Summer Scouting Program will engage youth in activities of gardening, traditional games, canoeing, and monthly ceremonies, as well as activity camps.
$550,000 the first year and $550,000 the second year are for grants for programs that preserve Dakota and Ojibwe Indian languages and to foster educational programs in Dakota and Ojibwe languages.
Youth developed competency in each skill (bow-making, lacrosse, arrow making, corn drying etc., and the language associated with it) and earned program badges. We presented the film we made highlighting the summer program activities and presented at our community feast and giveaway. Through the implementation of the Akicita Teca Scouting Program and its language immersion camps, we are already achieved the immediate goals of increased vocabulary, language proficiency and use of Dakota in social settings. We are on course to achieve the long term goals of creating much needed books in the Dakota language, increase positive attitudes of the Dakota language, culture, and nations amoung participating youth, and decreasing participation in at-risk behaviors.