Tribal youth participate in tipi raising. Photo from Facebook

The Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of Montana are working to pass on their languages to future generations.

A 2012 survey found 25 speakers of Nakoda, or Assiniboine, and 35 speakers of Dakota, or Sioux, on the reservation. The results prompted the tribe to set up the Fort Peck Languages and Cultures Department.

"This is our beginning to alarm our people that we are in this situation," department director Ramey Growing Thunder told The Great Falls Tribune.

Thanks to the new Montana Indian Language Preservation Pilot Program, the tribe has been able to produce a curriculum, a dictionary and a booklet to teach the Assiniboine and Dakota languages and to preserve tribal culture. The department also created a documentary, "Cante Etanhan Iapi," that follows participants in a language immersion camp and includes interviews with elders.

The state provided $250,000 to each of the eight tribes in Montana. State Sen. Jonathan Windy Boy (D) said the program has allowed tribes to quickly develop their own teaching methods and he plans to introduce a new bill to continue the effort.

"The intent of the funding was to be as flexible as possible, which I can understand that the red flags would have been raised by some of my legislative colleagues, but if it wasn't as flexible as it can be, it would not have allowed each reservation's projects to be as creative as they have been," Windy Boy told the paper.

Get the Story:
Film documents revitalization of Fort Peck languages (The Great Falls Tribune 11/10)

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