A language program on the Pine Ridge reservation is teaching a new generation to speak Lakota. That work is starting with the youngest voices and providing new preschool opportunities in a part of the state where early childhood education is limited.

The Lakota Immersion Preschool began as a small daycare in Peter Hill’s home.

“It was my daughter and four other kids, and we operated like that for the first year.”

That was in 2012.

“In those early days, it was just me and hopefully a first language speaker, and the kids. And however the day went that’s how the day went,” says Hill.

The idea is based on a method called a language nest. Dallas Nelson--the Director of the Lakota Language Initiative--explains.

“The idea of a language nest is to immerse the youngest group of people--in this case, 0-5 year olds--in nothing but the Indigenous language. The Maori started it, then the Hawaiians picked up and used the same method.”

Nelson says the language nest model is now used throughout the world to revitalize Indigenous languages. But one of the challenges teaching an endangered language is creating materials to use in class. . Peter Hill-- who’s fluent in Lakota --had translated nearly 100 children’s books into Lakota for his daughter. But with limited resources, he struggled to run an immersion daycare. He thought about giving up in the early years, but managed to keep going.

“I felt like even though we didn’t have hardly any money, even though we didn’t have hardly any capacity or staff—that the idea, the dream, the vision was a good one,” says Hill. “That if all of these things fell into place, that if we could just make it work, that we could essentially be where we are today.”

Hill eventually hired his colleague Matt Rama, an elementary teacher at Red Cloud Indian School. Then after winning their first major federal grant, the Lakota immersion program transitioned from a daycare to a preschool with curriculum.

Matt Rama explains he and Hill bought learning materials and translated them...created their own materials...and even produced YouTube videos in Lakota that they could play for the children. They joined with Thunder Valley--an organization focused on workforce development and education initiatives on the Pine Ridge reservation.

Rama explains the goal of the program isn’t just language learning, but also rooting students in their Lakota identity.

“I’ve heard lots of different things about early childhood education, and what is required in early childhood education and what does it look like. Does it look like Head Start? Does it look like this, does it look like that? But we believe—or definitely me and Peter believe, as Thunder Valley believe—that an early childhood education that’s rooted in language and culture is gonna be a better start for the kids here.”

Rama’s older children attended Head Start. His younger children attended the Lakota immersion preschool, and he’s noticed a difference in them.

“They’re more confident, they know themselves better, they’re able to communicate in two languages. They’re just—the confidence in themselves is something unique.”

Over the last few years the preschool program has expanded to two sites with a total of 27 students. And this year, Red Cloud Indian School announced its kindergarten classes are now Lakota immersion classrooms based on the language nest method.

But for most of its history, Peter Hill explains they never advertised the preschool and intentionally kept it small.

“Because we knew that living here in essentially a childcare desert, having a program that not only was a daycare center, but also one that offered Lakota immersion, we would have hundreds, thousands of kids on the waitlist for that. We’ve always had kids on the waitlist that are not born yet. We have had unborn children on the waitlist since we started it, just to give an example of the kind of demand.”

But while there’s plenty of demand, funding for this non-profit is a constant struggle. And Lakota Language Initiative Director Dallas Nelson says finding fluent teachers is another obstacle.

“Within our population on the entire reservation, which ranges from 15 to 25-thousand--there’s less than 3% of individuals that speak the language fluently.”

Nelson says the Lakota Language initiative also offers adult classes that are open to anyone.

In addition to seeing the way Lakota-based education can improve a child’s confidence, Matt Rama says parents who support the effort are finding a stronger sense of community with each other through the language. He hopes the preschool program continues to grow, and that parents work to learn the language too.

“My hope is it’s not just we have two daycares with 27 kids. It’s that we have, you know, 15 daycares with 450 kids!”

With the success of Hawaiian language nests as his inspiration, Peter Hill is just as hopeful for their program’s future.

“If we can be where they are 30 years from now, we’ll be very much succeeding. We’ll have the second generation of kids, children of these children who are in the program now that will be in the program. We’ll have graduates of our program who are teaching, who are maybe even running the Immersion program. But it is absolutely doable.”

The Lakota Immersion Preschool is an early learning opportunity in an underserved area. But it does something else as well. It instills confidence and pride in Lakota culture--both for young children and adults.

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