Native Language Film Showcase

Join us in the Steele Auditorium for a select screening of films featuring many Native languages, from fun documentaries to thoughtful short films. You will be sure to enjoy this program focused on diverse languages. Included with museum admission.

Here’s the schedule of the afternoon’s film showings and a panel discussion:

• Noon–1 p.m.              Choctaw Code Talkers (57 minutes): During World War I, Choctaw Indians were recruited for duty as communication specialists. The Choctaws used a code based on their language to transmit battlefield messages in Europe.

• 1:15–1:30 p.m.          Marie’s Dictionary (10 minutes): This short documentary tells the story of Marie Wilcox, the last fluent speaker of the Wukchumni language, and the dictionary she created in an effort to keep her language alive.

• 1:30–2 p.m.               The Lakota Berenstain Bears (approximately 13 minutes per episode, shown in partnership with The Language Conservancy (TLC):

The Lakota Berenstain Bears Project is a joint venture of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the Lakota Language Consortium, with the goal of bringing the Lakota language to family television sets across all Lakota-speaking communities in North Dakota and South Dakota, and well beyond. This 20-episode Lakota language edition of the Berenstain Bears is the first of its kind–the first Native American language cartoon series EVER.

Voices of the characters are all from the Lakota-speaking Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Pine Ridge, and Rosebud communities of North Dakota and South Dakota, and reflect all local dialects of the language.

• 2:15–3:15 p.m.          Rising Voices/Hótȟaŋiŋpi: Revitalizing the Lakota Language (60 minutes):

This film is a multi-platform documentary project that portrays the growing movement among tribes all over the country to revitalize their languages–a movement for creative transformation by communities and individuals, which challenges the expectations put on them by outsiders and those put on young generations by the old.

• 3:30–4 p.m.               Panel discussion: After the screening of Rising Voices/Hótȟaŋiŋpi, TLC staff and Rising Voices project contributors will lead “Why Save Endangered Languages?” about the need and benefits of preserving Native American languages.

The Language Conservancy (TLC) is a nonprofit organization leading the revitalization of endangered Native American languages across the U.S. by providing critical support to tribal education departments, schools, and by increasing public awareness on the crisis of disappearing languages.