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Old Lakota Language Bilingual Readers


In the 1940s and 1950s writer Anne Nolan Clark in collaboration with fluent Lakota speaker Emil Afraid of Hawk published eight books under the Education Division of the United States Indian Service that feature English and Lakota side by side. Ostensibly, the series was created to assist Lakota speakers with learning English. Today, the collection is another tool to help Lakota/Dakota language learners. Since they are government documents, they offer a path to be republished and re-purposed in this new age of Lakota/Dakota language revitalization. They also may offer a window into the language as it was used during the middle of the last century.

Six books are illustrated by the works of Andrew Standing Soldier, while one contains the artistry of famed Lakota artist Oscar Howe. Howe was working on the famous murals in the Sherr-Howe Arena in Mobridge, South Dakota for the WPA about the time Bringer of the Mystery Dog (linked below) was published and just before he entered the military in World War Two. More research is needed to discover whether these books were also born out of New Deal projects and programs like the Mobridge murals.

Copies of the books can be found here at the library. New versions of a few can also be found in bookstores. All of the books are linked below and are available to read for free online at Cornell University and Hathi Trust digital libraries.

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