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Listen to 1A's Friday News Roundup, only from NPR. Hey everyone you're listening to Code Switch. I'm B.A. Parker and today I have our

senior producer Christina Kala. Hey Christina, hey Parker. All right, so what do you have

for us today?

Two years ago, I started reading about a complex multi-generational fight over language that's

going on in the Lakota Nation.

The average speaker age of Lakota is over 75.

There's just not a lot of time to, you know, fight internally

when there's so much work to do

and this language is highly endangered.

A puzzle over ownership that can't fully be solved by the US legal system.

We're making things into property that perhaps should never be considered property in the first place.

And two educators who are desperately working with their language, but who have found themselves completely at odds.

For me, like the overlying mission is to do what's best for the language,

and dividing our people is not what's best for the language.

They're still selling my grandmother's sentences, our family's oral history and our

oral knowledge.

And Parker, to tell that story, I want to start with that grandmother, whose legacy

has been at the center of this fight.

Her name is Dolores taken alive.

...