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Piegan Institute, Browning, MT

Piegan Institute, a nonprofit organization chartered in Browning, Montana, on the Blackfeet Reservation, was created as a vehicle to research, promote, and preserve the language of the Blackfeet Tribe. Its most powerful representation of this focus has been the construction and staffing of two neighborhood-based private schools, one for pre-school children, the other for grades one through four.

Blackfeet children, preceded by those before them who have had little success in public school, are educated by being immersed in the use of their indigenous language, previously at risk of extinction within the tribe. Within the three years that these two Blackfeet schools have existed, students are thriving in many endeavors, including mastery of their own language as well as English.

In November 1999, members of the Blackfeet community in Browning, Montana celebrated the grand opening of the Lost Children School, a building containing two classrooms, a kitchen, and a dining room. The Nizi Puh Wah Sin (Real Speak School) complex now enables children from kindergarten through the eighth grades to be educated and immersed in the Blackfoot language.

The Lost Children School will house grades 5 through 8, and marks the completion of the development phase of Piegan Institute’sindigenous language programming on the Blackfeet Reservation.

The name for the school was chosen based on one of the oldests stories in Blackfoot oral tradition called I Ski Taks, (The Lost Children) about the resilience of Pikuni (Blackfeet) children who survive on their own after being abandoned by their community.

Lannan Foundation is pleased to have supported Piegan Institute, one of the foremost Native American language revitalization organizations in the country. 

Piegan Institute