MINNEAPOLIS — A dorm will open this fall at the University of Minnesota for Dakota language speakers and also for students who want to learn the indigenous language. The place is at Radius Apartments near campus in Dinkytown. The university already has another dorm — what’s called a “living learning community” – to help students who want to revitalize the indigenous Ojibwe language. The Ojibwe Immersion House opened last year. Both Dakota and Ojibweare taught in the university’s American Indian Studies Department.
Verbatim
Šišóka Dúta, a Dakota language instructor at the university, in an interview with the Minnesota Daily: “To speak the language is to literally breathe life into the language because you’re using the air to speak language, and so, in a metaphorical but in the literal way. So by speaking the language, we’re breathing life into it and that’s actually a phrase in our language.”
Radius Apartments. Home for new living-learning place.