"It's right along with our identity as a people, our traditional ceremonies, our prayers, our songs -- all of that's in the language," said Mike Carlow, who teaches Lakota to middle school students at Red Cloud School. Four years ago, he started the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota Language Summit in Rapid City, S.D.

"Do we lose all of that if we lose the language? How long will the language be here?" he said.

Home is key keeping language alive

Tribal educators believe immersion schools are crucial in reviving Lakota, but even the best immersion schools do not make students fluent if they don't speak the language at home. Many parents and grandparents are reluctant to do so, Shortbull said, because they remember being punished for speaking it while growing up.

"A lot of the older people say, ‘Well, when I went to school we were forbidden to speak it. When we went to town and tried to buy things people looked at us differently,'" Shortbull said. "They didn't want their children and grandkids to suffer the same fate that happened to them."