Technology Helps Preserve the Dakota Language

By Dawn Schuett, The Rochester Post-Bulletin (MN)

3/3/07

Curtis Campbell Sr.'s home is the confluence of tradition and technology.

Sitting in the middle of his living room, Campbell, 71, a tribal elder in the 711-member Prairie Island Indian Community, speaks into a headset microphone, lending his voice and words to a linguistic cause that should benefit future generations.

He is one of the few people here at the Prairie Island Indian Community who is fluent in the Dakota language of his ancestors. He's now helping pass on the language by recording basic questions and sentences in Dakota.

Tribal member Wayne Wells sits at a computer next to Campbell to cue him on the phrases delivered first in English:

"What is your name?"

"My name is."

"Where does he come from?"

"He comes from over there."

After each prompt, Campbell repeats the phrase in Dakota with his deep voice.

The recordings will be programmed into a Phraselator P2, a hand-held device created for the military after Sept. 11, 2001, by Maryland-based defense contractor Voxtec International. Users of the Phraselator speak a phrase in English and the device delivers an audio translation in another language.

Phraselators, each costing $3,300, allow U.S. troops in Iraq to communicate with Iraqis, but the devices have also found a purpose for Indian tribes in the United States who want to preserve and revive their languages.

Prairie Island bought five of the devices, which will be used initially in the Dakota language program in the community and may be used in the future by parents and children at home to keep the Dakota language alive.

Alan Childs II, who serves as treasurer on the Prairie Island Tribal Council, said it's important for those learning Dakota to hear it spoken.

"It's not a language, necessarily, where you can read a book and understand it," Childs said.

Since so few tribal members speak Dakota fluently, students will be able to hear the language regularly using the Phraselator.

Wells, 32, learned a few Dakota words growing up but said he didn't become proficient in the language until he studied it at the University of Minnesota. He now teaches the language to children at Prairie Island who are the fifth generation to not speak Dakota fluently. Many of their ancestors were forced to learn English.

"It's amazing just the progress I've seen in the kids," Wells said. Students at the intermediate level, who are 11 years old, are teaching beginning students the language, he said.

Portability of the device is an advantage to those who use it.

"It moves people away from the computer work station," said Don Thornton, founder of Thornton Media, Inc., the California company that markets the technological tool to Indian tribes.

It also mimics the way children learn to speak their first language, which is by hearing words and saying them repeatedly, Thornton said. The emphasis is on the oral aspect of the learning process, not the spelling or syntax of words.

"We're all for anything that puts the language back into the hands of the tribal members rather than the professors at the university," Thornton said.