Hiráaca Maa Aru Cáawi 2024 Community Language Survey
Our Community Language Survey was conducted online from March 15th to July 2nd, 2024 via Google Survey. The survey consisted of twenty-four (24) multiple choice questions. Questions were created to capture both quantitative and qualitative data.
The purpose of this survey is to identify needs for Hiráaca language learners and help inform our organization's creation of language learning resources and programs. Another part of this surveys’ purpose is to gauge Hiráaca language use and vitality and community attitudes towards language and language reclamation.
Results from this survey will help create an important snapshot of speakers & learners in our communities, how community members view language and help inform how community members may want to participate in the reclamation of their language. We hope to conduct another survey in three years in 2027.
If you plan to use any part of this survey for any research or academic purposes, please make sure to credit and cite the surveyor and author Lisa Casarez and our organization Hiráaca Maa Aru Cáawi as publisher. Máacagirá'ac.
View survey results in the slideshow below. A downloadble PDF will be available soon.
Who We Are:
Hiráaca Maa Aru Cáawi is an MHA nation community member led 501 (c)3 non-profit organization created for the purpose of revitalizating and reclaiming the Hidatsa language, a severely endangered Siouan language spoken in North Dakota that has many relatives on the Northern Plains and beyond.
Part of our mission is to be able to provide access to language learning for community members through developed learning materials, language classes and workshops that instruct attendee’s on the grammar of the language as well as informs learners through linguistic training.
We hope to establish a permanent adult second language learning program that will gear learners towards fluency in the Hidatsa language and prepare them for jobs in language and culture, such as public k12 Hidatsa language instructors, immersion school positions, culture and language presenters, as well as for learners own personal knowledge and benefit.
Indigenous Rights through Language Reclamation
"Indigenous peoples have the right to preserve, use, develop, revitalize, and transmit to future generations their own histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, systems of knowledge, writing, and literature, and to designate and retain their own names for their communities, individuals, and places... Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning."
- The American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Article XIV: Systems of Knowledge, Language, and Communication
This organization was created to support our own cultural sovereignty through language reclamation.
We appreciate your support. Maacagiraac. Heeshac.