Dakhota Iapi Okhodakichiye

Your contribution will be used to create materials and community based family programming to reverse the trend of language loss, and bring the Dakota language back to health!

Past Events and Activities:

Dakota Language Family Immersion Weekends Online and In Person

Dakota Summer Institute (Online and In Person)

Level 1 Speak Dakota Textbook and narrated audio cd

Level 2 Speak Dakota Textbook and narrated audio cd

Dakota Audio Journal

Dakota Language Bowl

Dakota Language Warrior Weekends

Dakota Language Talking Dictionary App

and more!

Dakota language for the home, community, and classroom.

Vision

Out of necessity for the Dakota language to live and thrive for generations, the Dakhóta Iápi Okhódakichiye was founded to create materials that can reverse the trend of language loss and begin to raise generations of fluent Dakota speakers.

Dakhota Iapi Okhodakichiye (Dakota Language Society) was created out of an international need for Dakota language materials to be implemented for language learning in the home, community and classroom.  If someone attempted to learn the Dakota language in 2016, they would immediately realize the difficulty in reaching their language learning goals. Due to the ongoing suppression of Indigenous languages and lifeways by eurocentric colonial empires, the Dakota language has experienced extreme language loss in the past century.  The banishment and forced relocation from traditional homelands, paired with the generations of children forcibly removed from their families and placed in boarding/residential schools across the US and Canada has caused the Dakota language to currently have  1 first speaker of Dakota that was born and raised in Minnesota Dakota communities along with approximately 20 speakers from Dakota communities outside of the state of Minnesota.  In SD, ND, NE, MT and Canada there are more Dakota speakers, however the average age of speakers is around 70 – the coming generations need the Dakota language.