Coming to PBS’s WORLD Channel as part of Native American Heritage Month today, Monday, November 16: RISING VOICES/Hótȟaŋiŋpi
Lawrence Hott and Diane Garey’s exploration of the Lakota language has screened at the South Dakota and Red Nation film fests, as well as numerous community screenings in the lead-up to its broadcast debut.
Confronting an issue that is a direct consequence of historical US policies around Native American assimilation, Hott and Garey’s film looks at the impending disappearance of the Lakota language. With fluency in the tongue vanishing as the elder population passes, the Lakota people question what will become of their culture divorced from their tribal language. Will the answer come in the form of immersion schools, or, curiously, from non-Native instructors who have become adepts in the disappearing language? The film offers poignant reflections of the role government-mandated Native American boarding schools had in shaming and punishing the Lakota and other tribes about their heritage and language, erasing the foundation of culture, and details efforts underway to re-embrace the tribal tongue before it dies out.
what (not) to doc 