Ryan Dixon: Making Friends with the Dakota Language

Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine · Sep 24, 2026 · 28m · transcript

Today, we're speaking with Ryan Dixon. Ryan is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe from Pine Ridge in South Dakota and has spent over two decades immersed in the Lower Sioux community in southern Minnesota. He trained under First Language Dakota speakers, and he now teaches Dakota. An educator and Indigenous language activist, he co-founded a Dakota Immersion Head Start programming and works to keep the language alive for future generations.

Ryan grew up in Georgia, far away from the Lakota homelands, but he had access to a first language speaker in his grandmother. When he moved to…