When Joe Bendickson was growing up, first on the Lake Traverse Reservation near the Minnesota-South Dakota border and then in St. Paul, he did not speak Dakota, his ancestral tongue. Few did.

MINNEAPOLIS — Introduced in fall 2023, the University of Minnesota’s new Dakota language major is part of the movement throughout Dakota communities to increase the number of Dakota language speakers ...

At a recent camp at Belwin Conservancy in Afton, Minnesota, children and adults spent the day learning a language that was almost wiped out. "It was our ancesters who were told not to speak our ...

A new University of Minnesota Living Learning Community (LLC) called the Dakota Language House will launch next fall to advance and support students’ learning of the Dakota language. Radius Apartments ...

ST. PAUL — Vanessa GoodThunder, 26, is the director of the Cansayapi Wakanyeza Owayawa Ti, the Lower Sioux Early Head Start and Head Start Dakota language immersion program in Morton, Minn. She is ...

One thing Barry Hand is trying to get across to his students is this: Language is power. For the first time in years, students at Red Wing High School can take a class in the Dakota Language. It’s not ...

Four years ago, some 200 people gathered to celebrate the removal of a controversial structure at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. This weekend a new piece, created by Dakota artist Angela Two Stars, ...

GOOD THUNDER — An area man who died last month was one of only two first-language Dakota speakers left in Minnesota who teach the language. Conversations in Dakota here have been on the increase; and ...

The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) and the Upper Sioux Community this week unveiled four new dual-language highway signs in the Dakota language and in English. The signs, marking the ...

MORTON — Decorating bright orange T-shirts was the order of the day for a dozen Native American girls one Tuesday in September. Some of the girls from the Lower Sioux Community at Morton ironed ...

Four years ago, some 200 people, many of them Dakota, gathered to celebrate the removal of the controversial “Scaffold” from the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The sculpture included design elements ...