By Lee Egerstrom
The University of Minnesota currently has 10 students enrolled in the nation’s only four-year major language program for the Dakota language. This breakthrough for the language comes while plans are underway to celebrate a new home for the Department of American Indian Studies where Native language programs are housed.
Details were still in the works at this writing for an open house for the new home. It is set for Oct. 30 at the site, a remodeled not-so-new Pattee Hall at 150 Pillsbury Dr. SE in Minneapolis. This grand old building, named after the University’s first law school dean, William S. Pattee, has had several lives serving the university and its students since it was originally opened in 1889.
The 4 to 6 p.m. open house will provide visitors and well-wishers an opportunity to learn more about the Dakota and Ojibwe language programs offered by the Department of Indian Studies and a new Ph.D. program currently under development at the department that is part of the College of Liberal Arts.
In its invite to the public, the department said the open house is a “community celebration” of its new home. The invitation said it means “our teaching and research will thrive, our Dakota and Ojibwe language programs will flourish, we will expand our oral history work, develop our Ph.D. program, and we will have a warm and welcoming space to continue our community work.”
College of Liberal Arts Dean Ann Waltner and Dr. David Aiona Chang, a history professor of Hawaiian Native origin who is the American Indian Studies department chair, are leading the open house program.
Minnesota tribal leaders, community leaders and the general public are invited, said Nicholas (Bimibatoo Mishtadim) DeShaw, a Bois Forte Band descendant who is the outreach coordinator for the department.
The new Dakota language program was actually started a year ago but is now in full operation with enrolled students, DeShaw said.
Both this first of its kind four-year program and the new home for American Indian Studies are strong commitments the university is making in acknowledging the Twin Cites’ campus site is indeed on Dakota land, he said.
Dakota languages courses have been offered since the University began the Department of American Indian Studies in 1969. That, too, was a first in the nation program.
Elsewhere, language courses are available at tribal colleges and at other campuses in areas serving Dakota and Lakota people, DeShaw said. But no other college or university offers a full major program in the language.
The underlying purpose for a complete bachelor’s program degree is to prepare and qualify graduates to be educators in the Native languages. In background material on the programs at the University’s campuses, it cited 2009 studies that found only 678 first language Ojibwe speakers and just five first language Dakota speakers in Minnesota. These are the two most dominant Indigenous languages in Minnesota but expertise in the languages was declining.
Both the Minnesota Dakota and Ojibwe language programs result in Bachelor of Arts degrees.
Looking around the country at other academic programs, DeShaw said he found a number of degrees that have an emphasis in Native languages. “I am not aware of any other Bachelor’s programs in an Indigenous language,” he said.
The University said its Dakota Iapi Unspewicakiyapi Teaching Certificate was designed to combat the Dakota language loss in Minnesota. It is part of a global effort to revitalize indigenous languages by developing language learners, speakers and teachers.
“This effort is part of a global indigenous language revitalization movement based on the understanding that language is fundamental to cultural survival and tribal sovereignty,” the program explains.
In program material directed at prospective students, the University said they can develop a level of fluency in the language that prepares them to conduct their own total immersion classrooms using the respective Native language.
The University connects the language program to state teaching licensure programs and other institutions that need certified language teachers, it said. These close ties help provide graduates with careers and attract prospective indigenous language speakers and teachers to their communities.
For visitors who may attend the open house, an accessible entrance to Pattee Hall is located near the side parking lot parallel to Shevlin Hall. Visitors may contact Tamara Hageman at hageman@umn.edu with accessibility questions.
