Ethan Neerdaels - How were the Humanities vital to your life and/or work in 2014?

Bdewakantunwan – In 2012 Ethan was a Minnesota Historical Society History Museum Fellow as well as American Indian History Museum Fellow. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a degree in American Indian Studies and a focus on the Dakota language, where he also was a teaching assistant of the beginning and intermediate Dakota language classes. Ethan is the Director of the Dakhóta Iápi Okhódakičhiye (Dakota Language Society). Ethan is an American Indian Culture and Language Specialist for the Osseo Area School District.

Wótakuye is a word from the original language of this land meaning relatedness or kinship. It is the original dream/responsibility of humanity, to be good relatives. An important part of the humanities is understanding where you are. The history of this place, Minnesota, is most accurately narrated in the original language birthed of the land.

Living in Minnesota in 2014 there are many reminders that Minnesota is Dakota land. From the hundreds of place names with mispronounced Dakota words to the historical markers at Treaty Signing Sites marking the illegal land theft that has yet to be reconciled. How can one live in a place and not even know the origins of the name of their state “Minnesota” are rooted in the Dakota language?

Dakhóta Iápi – The Dakota language contains words that express the unique relationships and natural phenomena of human existence in this area from time immemorial. After the first treaties with Euro-American colonizers, the Dakota language continued to accommodate the people’s experience as new terms had to be created to reflect the new experiences and concepts such as land ownership, concentration camps, forced relocation, just to name a few. With the advent of the reservation era, the Dakota language entered a period of darkness, where it went underground in order to survive the government and church-run boarding/residential schools. Many Dakota children were verbally, mentally, or physically abused for practicing their own traditions and speaking their language. These institutionally supported assaults on the Dakota family created a period of trauma and assimilation during which the Dakota language, for the most part, stopped being transmitted inter-generationally by the family. Recent estimates put the number of first language speakers born in Minnesota Dakota communities at less than ten. There are an estimated 5,000 speakers of the Dakota/Lakota/Nakota language across the surrounding area of Dakota exile communities, but the average age of a Dakota first language speaker is over 65 years old. Across all Dakota communities there is resurgence among the youth to bring the language back to health.

Even with a strong revitalization movement of the Dakota language, language learners are running into a variety of challenges that most other language teachers/learners do not encounter. For example, there are currently no K-12 immersion opportunities for Dakota children within the original homeland of Minnesota. Why can one easily find and attend an immersion school for immigrant languages, but the indigenous languages of this area are so marginalized? Why is there no state-wide or community support of indigenous language revitalization? If the humanities truly matter in the modern world, we must do everything in our power to ensure the indigenous are not forever silenced by the systematic death of the original language and lifeways of this place, Minnesota.

Phidámayayedo

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