Interview · South Dakota · Vanessa Iverson
Themes: Language & revitalization, Kinship & family, Identity & belonging, Education & learning, Healing & resilience, Culture & continuity, Children & young people
New transcript-based questions created with AI assistance using Scott Simpson’s Learn About and Learn From guide.
Learn About questions
1. What does Vanessa Iverson hope the OSEU will contribute to schools and children's pride?
2. How does she connect past trauma with language not being passed down in her family?
3. What language-learning goal does she describe for her children and family?
Learn From questions
1. What learning would I like a child to bring home with pride?
2. What knowledge has been interrupted in my family, and how might I approach that loss with care?
3. What small shared practice could help my household learn something we value?
Transcripts
The OSEU Need to Continue to Grow
Watch this interview on YouTubeThe OSEU Need to Continue to Grow - Vanessa
Iverson
I definitely hope that this just continues to grow. That culture is something not just culture,
but Native American culture, the Oceti Sakowin understandings, is something that just digs
deeper into our curriculum in our schools and the mindset of everyone so that when my kids
go to school they can completely understand and come home with such a proud idea we
learned this and this and the language side of it. I'm fortunate my grandma still speaks
Lakota.
She's one of the oldest Yankton Sioux tribal members alive right now, at 95, but you know,
because of past traumas she did not pass that on and so I only know certain words and
certain phrases, and that would also be one of my goals and dreams for my kids to be able
to speak at least a little bit. You know you can't be fluent if people in your home aren't fluent,
and so that would be a goal of our family to really kind of dig into that as well.
Source materials
Transcripts from supplied documents and the current WoLakota source pages. Text preserved as published.