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
Why is a non-profit trying to make profit out of this operation, rather than freely distributing the knowledge they’ve collected? The US are so permissive with their NGOs that it’s far easier to find a nest of grifters than a legitimate one.
Non profit doesn’t mean free. A non profit costs money to run. In this case I guess arguably selling textbooks and material is how the money to preserve the language comes in. The only alternativesnwould presumably be charitable donations.
Money that comes in to a non profit is not used for profit or shares but reinvested in the non profit to further its goal such as preserving a dying language.
To make money from a non profit you need to create exorbitant costs.
I’ve seen the money management in US NGOs earn. If they want to claim they have tight budgets, they have to tighten their belts first.