Stephanie R. Charging Eagle

Native Lakota Speaker Shares Once Oral Language and History with RFTEN

Stephanie R. Charging Eagle's first language is Lakota, the native tongue of the Tutunwan Sioux.

Ms. Charging Eagle, the Director for Graduate Studies at Oglala Lakota College, a RFTEN-member institution on the Pine Ridge Reservation in Kyle, SD, used her expertise and love of the language to painstakingly translate pages of the RFTEN Website. Until the latter part of the 19th century, Lakota was an oral language, not written. With the influence of Christianity, several orthographies were developed although the Lakota people have not endorsed one standard orthography out of respect for the oral tradition of the language. Ms. Charging Eagle says translating the RFTEN home and other Web pages into Lakota was difficult because she had to use an orthography that does not include computer font.

Her parents, Steve and the late Lorraine Makes Trouble Charging Eagle, and siblings, are all fluent Lakota speakers. Today, Ms. Charging Eagle who earned a masters degree in education, is working to keep Native American languages and history alive. The doctoral student is studying American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona and concentrating her research on native language acquisition for educational institutions. Ms. Charging Eagle is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe of South Dakota and a direct descendant of Crazy Horse and of Big Foot and Hump of the Hohwoju band.