August 25, 2011

Lakota Berenstain Bears to premiere

Native American Version of Berenstain Bears Launches SoonAfter more than a year in the making, the Lakota version of the popular cartoon The Berenstain Bears or Matȟó Waúŋšila Thiwáhe—The Compassionate Bear Family—will make its debut September 11 at 9 a.m. through South Dakota Public Broadcasting (SDPB) and Prairie Public Television.

Two episodes a week will air on SDPB digital channel 3 and Prairie Public’s digital channel 4 every Sunday morning through November. Then, local access stations KOLC and REZ IPTV will broadcast the show to viewers on the Pine Ridge and Cheyenne River reservations.
Comment:  For more on the subject, see Berenstain Bears Cartoons in Lakota.

1 comment:

Rob said...

For more on the subject, see:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fn%2Fa%2F2011%2F09%2F14%2Fnational%2Fa003045D95.DTL

Berenstain Bears now speaking endangered language

Papa Bear, Mama Bear and their cubs have helped children curb junk-food addictions and organize messy rooms for half a century. Now, from their tree house in idyllic Bear Country, the beloved Berenstain Bears are helping revive an endangered American Indian language.

Lakota for the "Compassionate Bear Family," the animated series "Matho Waunsila Thiwahe" is the first animated series ever translated into an American Indian language and began airing this week on public television in North Dakota and South Dakota. Twenty episodes of the Berenstain Bears were dubbed into the ancient language of the Sioux, whose tribal lands span both states, and will run weekly through 2011.

Disney's classic movie "Bambi" was dubbed in Arapaho in the mid-1990s to help preserve that language and culture, but never before has an animated series been translated to help children learn new words and phrasings with each episode, said Wilhelm Meya, executive director of Lakota Language Consortium.