Welcome back to Wičháho Blihélya - a podcast in the Lakota language! We are excited to kick off Season 2 with our first episode featuring one of the last fluent Lakota speakers from Wood Mountain (Ȟé-Čháŋ), the only Lakota speaking community in Canada, Hartland Goodtrack. We met Hartland last fall at the Thuswéčha Lakota/Dakota/Nakoda Language Summit in Rapid City.

We are so grateful that he took the time to speak with us and allow us to record him for the podcast. In this episode, he talks about growing up, being raised by his grandparents, and speaking Lakota. However, today he is one of the last living fluent speakers from his community. We can learn from his story to value and cherish the speakers in our communities and to continue working to ensure that our language continues on for generations to come.

This episode features speakers Hartland Goodtrack (Húŋkpapȟa), Robert Two Crow (Oglála), and Alex FireThunder (Oglála).

Wičháho Blihélya means, “with energetic voices” in Lakota. This podcast is intended to serve four 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, language reclamation in finding innovative ways to insert the language into more spaces including digitally on social media, 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 the Lakota Language Consortium. We’d also like to thank G. F. Buche Co. for their sponsorship and contribution.

Support the show
Follow us on social media: Lakota Language Consortium.

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, and Jamie Marquez-Bratcher.

A special wóphila to Shania Black Bear-Searby for our amazing podcast artwork and to Talon Ducheneaux at the Oglala Lakota Artspace and Wičháȟpi Olówaŋ Recording Studios for providing the intro and outro music.

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