“There was a real survival reason we have elder speakers only and then a whole generation of non-speakers,” Carlow said. “The fear was that their children could be beaten, ridiculed, ostracized.”

But now, young adults are taking on the task of learning and teaching Dakota and Lakota.

Twenty-one-year-old Bobby Pourier and 20-year-old Chase Warren taught a beginner-level course during the morning session and took higher-level classes in the afternoon.

“Language is perhaps the most important thing going forward to remember as a people,” said Warren, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

They each had about a dozen students in their classes. Pourier, a member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, said within just two weeks, his class had learned so much more than he had anticipated.

“Because we are Lakota, we have a Lakota spirit and that spirit is fluent in our language,” Pourier said. “You just have to bring out that part of yourself.”

Elliot Bannister, a 27-year-old language specialist from England, said “even after a week of classes people are having fluent conversations in the lunch line.”