“No matter how it was collected, where it was collected, when it was collected, our language belongs to us," said Ray Taken Alive, a Lakota teacher.

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

  • spacesatan@lemm.ee
    0·
    16 days ago

    “My grandmother was paid to recite material, it’s literally theft of my heritage that I, her grandchild, do not own the distribution rights to that specific recording”

    If they were trying to copyright the stories or the language that would be one thing but it’s just their recordings and material they’ve produced. He probably shouldn’t have used his position at the school as part of his slander campaign if he didn’t want to risk losing it. If there was no professional misconduct then his licensure isn’t at much risk.