Over the weekend, Marvel dropped a video online showing only some of the 15-month process to create a Lakota-language dub of The Avengers, reuniting the original cast to re-record their roles in the Lakota language.
This is a HUGE step for Indigenous language preservation. As Ray Taken Alive, a Lakota teacher and activist, says, like so many Native American and First Nations languages, the Lakota language was forbidden to be spoken at residential schools which cut off young Natives from their mother tongues. It’s estimated there are only around 2,000 first-language Lakota speakers left, and previous attempts to preserve the language have run into issues, such as exploitation by a white-run organization that copyrighted language materials collected from Lakota speakers.
I mentioned this project last year as part of a larger effort at Marvel to create Indigenous-language dubs of their titles. Echo has Choctaw dubs, and this Lakota dub of The Avengers is one of the bigger projects included in the effort. It came about from Mark Ruffalo, whose environmental activism connected him to the Lakota nation over water and land rights (Ruffalo puts his money where his mouth is). The original cast worked with Lakota speakers and actors to re-record their roles, and what jumps out in the video is how much effort they’re putting in, not just to get the pronunciation right, but to give good performances in Lakota, which makes for a higher-quality dub (we’ve all heard terrible, flat deliveries in dubbed movies at one time or another, the effort is appreciated).
This is real hero sh-t, especially for those who worked so hard behind the scenes to make this happen, and it’s a major step for Lakota language preservation. It’s a reminder that despite systemic efforts to kill it, Lakota is a living language, and this will hopefully encourage more people to learn and speak the language. It will also hopefully encourage more studios to invest in Indigenous language dubs—there’s a Navajo dub of Star Wars—thus continuing to preserve these languages for future generations. It took effort to bring Indigenous languages to the brink of extinction, it will take effort to revive them.
