The Lakota Language Consortium had promised to preserve the tribe’s native language and had spent years gathering recordings of elders, including Taken Alive’s grandmother, to create a new, standardized Lakota dictionary and textbooks.
But when Taken Alive, 35, asked for copies, he was shocked to learn that the consortium, run by a white man, had copyrighted the language materials, which were based on generations of Lakota tradition. The traditional knowledge gathered from the tribe was now being sold back to it in the form of textbooks.
“No matter how it was collected, where it was collected, when it was collected, our language belongs to us. Our stories belong to us. Our songs belong to us,” Taken Alive, who teaches Lakota to elementary school students, told the tribal council in April.
The legal fundraising page for the man in the article is here
It sounds a bit scummy, but it seems that’s what they agreed to. They’d get paid to provide the knowledge, and he would make and sell the books, etc. And it sounds like the materials are provided for free for schools and other educational purposes.
Sure, hate capitalism all you want, but it’s the system we live in, and it’s what enables the guy to be a linguist instead of having to hunt and farm and house himself. If the tribes want their knowledge kept within the tribe, they will have to do the work themselves.
As pointed out in the first paragraph of the article, “Lakota Language Consortium” is a nonprofit organization. While NPOs operate in our capitalist system, you expect them to have goals besides pure profit.
It’s not actually a legitimate excuse for regular corporations, either!
The notion that corporations have an obligation to maximize shareholder profit, let alone to the sociopathic exclusion of everything else, is nothing less than a complete perversion of what the privilege of incorporation is supposed to be for.
Oh dude the list of things we’ve let corporations get away with over the centuries… They were originally supposed to be limited time, often purely for a single project, and kept under a watchful eye. Because we knew they were dangerous.
They’ve gone from that to permanent titans of industry with the rights of a person, held above any rights of individuals they come into contact with.
This tribe has barely 16,000 people registered as tribal members, total.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_Rock_Indian_Reservation
Do you really think the number of books they’re asking for is truly obscene? With barely 16,000 people, it’s not like they have a metric fuckton of kids who are going to need access to these books to learn about their own history.
Is that really going to impact his ability to take care of himself?
This is like those jokers who act like Naomi Klein literally naming her book and making the thesis “This Changes Everything” and that we have to get rid of capitalism and reject it wholesale to prevent total collapse wasn’t out of line for at the very least also releasing a free, digital copy of the book, if it really “changes everything.” Just like these people, they’re never willing to put their money where their fucking mouth is. She wouldn’t have lost print sales because a digital copy existed.
Same here, he could just give them DRM’d digital copies of his book and fuck off already instead of acting like this is going to be a massive impact on his ability to sell the book. What do they want a hundred books? Oh no! Fuck me, what a joke.
Finally, it’s not a single guy, it’s a “non-profit consortium” and if you look into them, Executive Pay makes up 13% of their total budget. Maybe they could just not pay the fucking CEO so much and then maybe they could actually pay their fucking linguist and give away books to Standing Rock kids.
Their revenue is $898K and their operating budget is $931K which to me sounds like a lot of fucking white people who don’t know how to budget for shit.
If the goal was really to sell educational materials, then yes, those 16,000 people are the vast majority of people who would ever buy intensive Lakota language instruction, and that’s why he’s refusing to sell.
There are a small number of linguists specializing in Native American languages, and probably an even smaller number of non-Lakota amateurs. For the rest of people, a YouTube video will satisfy their curiosity and they would never pay for a full course.
But it would be a dick move for them to spend all that time with a community for the purpose of preserving an endangered language, and then make it harder to preserve the language.
Wow, out and out that it’s 100% okay to sell a marginalized society’s history back to them at a price. What. The. Fuck.
Do you know why there aren’t tons of Native American linguists out there? Because Native Americans are by and large poor marginalized communities. Plus, as a community of only barely 16,000 people, it’s not exactly like they have a massive pool of talent to pull from when it comes to linguists. Most kids probably aren’t growing up hoping to be linguists. Plus, once again, most are god damned dirt poor.
(As an aside, they’re literally trying to take this guys teaching license. Their solution is to say “Fuck them Native American kids, they don’t need teachers!” Yeah, they really “care” about this community.)
But because their own community didn’t have a homegrown linguist it’s okay to sell their history back to them because they’re… the only people who care about that history?? Tacitly admitting that no one else gives a shit, so the Consortium “have to” exploit the only people who care, the very people they learned it all from themselves. The people who were too poor for their own home-grown linguist.
Fuck it, we’re done here, this is some seriously dumb totally exploitative white people shit.
Take this white savior shit and shove it up your fucking ass, civility rules can get fucked because saying that kind of shit isn’t even close to civil. Colonizers are always polite when they’re pointing their gun in your face. Or in this case, their legal systems.
Like we’re literally talking about less than 16,000 people living on a RESERVATION “given to them” by the nation that stole all their fucking land and killed half their tribes people. A nation that has 350 million plus people. They’re the definition of marginalized and exploited.
The American way.
Bruh, did you even finish reading my comment? I know it’s fucked up. But you were wondering why it’d be such a big deal to provide them with free materials when there are only 16,000 of them. And the answer is because they were always planning on selling it right back to them.
iTs ThEiR fAuLt tHeY gOt ScAmMeD