Albert Hat

Background

Albert White Hat was born near Saint Francis, South Dakota on the Rosebud Reservation to a traditional family. I grew up with a lot of the older people, listened to the stories.

Education

He attended day school in Spring Creek, South Dakota.

Career

He translated the Lakota language for Hollywood movies, including the 1990 movie Dances with Wolves, and created a modern Lakota orthography and textbook. He spoke only Lakota as a child. Unlike many of his peers at Saint Francis Jesuit Mission School, who were sent to boarding school at age five, he was not sent until age sixteen.

And those stories were inside of medical

And I went into a boarding school system, and they killed those stories in that system. I came out of there totally ashamed of who I am, what I american

In the late sixties, I went back to the culture, on my own. I let my hair grow, I started speaking my language.

And one of those times, I fasted.

I did the vision quest, for five years. Lakota language was not a part of the South Dakota state curriculum at the time. Eventually he learned to create his own lesson plans, and became a Lakota language teacher himself.

He became chair of the "Committee for the Preservation of the Lakota Language" in 1982.

White Hat spent twenty-five years teaching the Lakota language at Sinte Gleska University on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, and became the head of the Sinte Gleska Lakota Studies Department." He developed a teaching method that uses extensive examples from the culture of the Brule Lakota, and became known as a scholar of the language. He would teach Lakota culture to "both tribal members and non-Native Americans." He has been quoted as saying, "When we teach a language to a student, we should develop in that student another heart and another mind." He assembled his notes into a book in 1999, He was the "first native Lakota speaker to publish a Lakota textbook and glossary." He was active in traditional Lakota spiritual life.

A "Lakota Documentaries" video by Don Moccasin (1948–2009) features Albert White Hat speaking about the survival of the Lakota language, in Lakota with English language subtitles.

Achievements

• Living Indian Treasure Award (2007) National Indian Education Association Indian Elder of the Year (2001) Outstanding Indian Educator Award (1995).

Views

Quotations: "both tribal members and non-Native Americans.".