The South Dakota Humanities Council has selected its first tribal author for this year’s reading program. A collection of three Lakota creation stories written and voiced in both Lakota and English is being distributed to Second Graders across the state for the Summer reading book selection.
Tatanka is the first of three books in the collection, ‘Tatanka and Other Legends of the Lakota People’. It was written by eight Lakota people in South Dakota. Donald Montileaux illustrated the children's book, then wrote and illustrated two accompanying books ‘Tasunka’ and ‘Muskrat and Skunk’. Montileaux is the author selected for the Young Readers One Book in South Dakota.
“That’s our aim to give every Second Grader in South Dakota a book. So the Summer read program is going to be my book. So we’ll distribute them in May to Second Graders that we can and then in the Fall we will gather them all again at the South Dakota Book Festival and I’ll do a presentation there. They’ll be Third Graders then. And we’ll have all the Third Graders come and see how they enjoyed the Summer Read Program.”
The collection is being accompanied by an audiobook read in Lakota so children can hear what the language sound like.
...Speaking Lakota...“That means see when mother Earth was young, all things on her surface where learning their place.”
Agnes Gay is reading the translations. She also translated text for two of the three books in the collection. Lakota is Gay’s first language. She says introducing these stories into the South Dakota School system will help pass the language on to future generations.
“Lakota people are everywhere and they should have that in every school so they don’t forget. Once they move to the city or wherever, they tend to forget their language. Most of them don’t speak it now, so they have to be taught.”
Gay says it’s good for non-Lakota people to learn the language as well. ‘Tatanka and Other Legends of the Lakota People’ is available to elementary schools all across the state.