Lakota AI Code Camp

For the past 2 years, the Lakota AI Code Camp has been up and running, co-founder Mason Grimshaw, Sicangu Lakota, has been inspired to start a youth-based code camp to teach the youth about coding and computer science. This year the camp took place June 11-30th in the He Sapa at the Black Hills State University campus in Spearfish, South Dakota.

The 3-week long camp came about when Grimshaw had the idea to not only introduce the Lakota youth to coding but also to help create researchers for computer programming. The Lakota AI Code Camp is a combination of the Lakota culture and artificial intelligence to help preserve and teach the Lakota language.

There is a program/ app that they use throughout the whole camp called First Languages AI Reality or FLAIR. Within this program they are able to be given an opportunity to work and build on an app that will not only promote the language but bridge the gap between learning when there are no elders or fluent Lakota speakers present.

The first week the camp teaches the students about basic structure, data exploration and analysis. They are introduced to coding and do small projects to help get the students used to coding.

The second week they will have different Indigenous language researchers and teachers visit the camp and teach the students about their learning and experience. The first weekend of camp, Linda Black Elk came to take the students on a hike in the Blacks hills to teach and show them different traditional plants and medicines. After the end of week two of camp, they were able to build a model that helped identity the plants from pictures that they took during the hike.

Everything is funded for the students in camp, the food and housing is covered, students are given phones and laptops that they can take home when camp is finished and are taken to do extracurricular activities when they are done with classes for the day. The camp is a holistic focus but also, they focus on the cultural aspects and in the evenings, they will have Lakota language classes that the students enjoy. There are also sessions to help students with college readiness to help them prepare for college. There are Indigenous presenters that come in during the camp to talk about their journey with computer program and coding. There were people that came in that helped with Pokémon Go, Pixar and Google Maps.

When starting the camp, Grimshaw wanted introduce coding to young students early to see if that was something they would be interested in doing as they grew older. Coding and computer programming is not something often taught in reservation schools, so why not start a Lakota Code camp that does just that?

At the end of the year or sometimes in the beginning of the year, in December-January, they will send applications to different schools on the reservation to reach out and see if students are interested in participating in the camp.

“I am blown away and impressed with the students who come to camp. Often you see that they get discouraged that they can’t do it but the camp works and pushes them to keep going. There they grow with it and by the end of the week they are very good at coding,” said Grimshaw.

Brittany can be reached at [email protected]