RISING VOICES/HÓTȞAŊIŊPI, a 60-minute film by Lawrence Hott and Diane Garey, was a production of Florentine Films/Hott Productions, Inc. in association with The Language Conservancy.
Rising Voices/Hótȟaŋiŋpi. Five years in the making, this multi-platform project tells the story of a powerful threat to a Native culture. This threat is an insidious, impersonal villain – one that comes through TV sets and social media sites, through Tweets and comic strips and the daily news. The menace is the English language, and the victim seemingly marked for extinction is the Lakota language itself – the language of the Lakota nation, once usually called the Sioux. For the Lakota people, it’s a local problem, but it’s just one instance of a massive global one – a worldwide epidemic of language extinction.
The film was broadcast on PBS, and received major sponsorship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Administration for Native Americans, the Dakota Indian Foundation, the South Dakota Humanities Council, the North Dakota Humanities Council and Vision Maker Media.