How a Philadelphia man made it his mission to keep the Lakota language, legacy alive
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Every week, Eugene Black Crow turns his apartment in North Philadelphia into a classroom.
As the founder of the Lakhota Woglakapo Project, the 68-year-old offers free, one-on-one Lakota language classes on Zoom to other members of the Sioux tribe.
Most of his students live in North and South Dakota.
"It makes me feel good because you know, teaching these youngers how to come back to their language, how to re-learn their language, because, you know, we have to preserve it," Black Crow said.
Black Crow, who's originally from South Dakota himself, is one of the few native speakers left.
"We got to keep this language going because it's our culture, you know, it's our history," he said.
According to the Lakota Language Consortium, there were more than 200,000 native Lakota speakers in the late 1800s, before the boarding school era.
Nowadays, only about 1,000 fluent speakers remain.
"Nowadays, youngsters, you know, they all speak English while they're born, they speak English to 'em, so they're losing the language," Black Crow said. "And our elders are dying every week."
Decades ago, most boarding schools didn't allow indigenous children to speak their language.
Black Crow said on his first day of boarding school at age six, he wanted to use the bathroom but didn't know how to say it in English, so his teacher refused to let him go.
"She wasn't looking, so I tried to sneak out and she caught me and grabbed me by the ear, sat me down and really hit me with a big old ruler," he said. "And I couldn't hold my pee any longer, so I peed my pants, and she got mad at me and hit me some more."
It was a traumatic experience, but it didn't deter him.
He and his students are determined to keep the language alive.
On this day, Black Crow is teaching Brett Koplin from Minnesota, who learned bits and pieces of Lakota from relatives.
"I remember fondly, remember my uncle speaking Lakota, telling jokes, so when I hear Eugene Black Crow speak, he reminds me of my uncles. I'm very grateful to him for being able to share his knowledge," Koplin said.
Through these lessons, Koplin is hoping to build up his fluency so one day he can teach others, like his nieces.
"I think he'll be a good teacher. He might make a good teacher later on if I keep up with him and all that. And when I'm gone, he'll keep that language going," Black Crow said.
Keep the language going so future generations can stay connected to their roots.
