This past June of 2023, we held the Lakota Summer Institute (LSI) in our beautiful Ȟesápa in Rapid City, SD. We partnered with Rural America Initiatives to hold two weeks of intensive Lakota language learning and teacher training. Bringing people together who are passionate about learning, teaching, speaking and advocating for the language is always a beautiful experience. This year, we were so fortunate to have a number of fluent speakers and elders amongst us. During one of the sessions, Rick Two Dogs and Ben Black Bear Jr took turns relaying funny jokes and stories in Lakota. In the room you could see learners and teachers together sharing the medicine of laughter. Amidst the busy summer, the co-hosts for Wičháho Blihélya have not been able to meet to record an episode, however, we wanted to share this glimpse into the joke session that occurred at LSI this year.

Speakers in this episode include: Rick Two Dogs (Oglála), Ben Black Bear JR (Sičháŋǧu), and Alex FireThunder (Oglála). 

Wičháho Blihélya means, “with energetic voices” in Lakota. This podcast is intended to serve three major purposes: language preservation via documentation of the Lakota language as it is spoken by Native speakers and elders, language revitalization via providing interesting and engaging content for language learners to listen to in low-anxiety environments and for teachers to use in classrooms, and finally language maintenance by providing Lakota speakers with a talk show to listen to in their first language. This podcast was made possible by Hóyeya and The Lakota Language Consortium. 

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This podcast is a free resource to share the language. If you’d like to support our efforts in providing monetary gifts for the speakers on this podcast you can donate here - https://lakhota.org/donate/

Thanks to the LLC team that worked on this episode: 

Alex FireThunder, Robert Two Crow, Shania Black Bear-Searby, Jamie Marquez-Bratcher, Jan Ullrich, and Marek Kupiec.

A special wóphila to Shania Black Bear-Searby for our amazing podcast artwork.

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