I just finished reading the eBook version of In the Footsteps of Little Crow, having missed the newspaper version (for non-Minnesotans, this is a detailed and well-researched account of the 1862 Dakota Uprising in southern Minnesota that appeared serialized in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which shows that the paper isn't always worthless). The epilogue said that Dakotas are now interested in preserving and reviving their language, which is happening with a lot of tribes, including Minnesota's other major tribe, the Ojibwe.
It's happening in the Celtic regions, first with Irish--many years ago, I was in an Irish pub (McCafferty's) in St. Paul, treating my grandmother to one of their meat-and-potatoes meals, and a family walked in, speaking a language that I could neither understand nor identify. When the waiter came around to take their order, they switched to strongly Irish-accented English. Welsh has managed to stay alive, and if you click through the right links on the BBC website, you can find articles in Scottish Gaelic.
It's happening in Hawaii. When I was there in 1977 for a summer session at UH, place names and a few songs were the only evidence that the islands had ever had their own language. When I went back in 1991, the UH newspaper had daily columns in Hawaiian, a couple of people at the Fourth of July celebration gave speeches in Hawaiian, and the street and other geographical names were now spelled with the proper markings indicating long vowels and glottal stops. Taking their inspiration from the Maori, native Hawaiians had started a system of immersion schools.
It's happening in the former Soviet Union. Under the Soviets, all Latvians were required to learn Russian, but the Russians transferred in (until they made up nearly half the population) were not required to learn Latvian. Now ability to speak Latvian is required for citizenship.
It's happening among Australian Aborigines, at least among the tribes that still have speakers.
It's even happening among the Ainu in Japan, even though when I lived there in the 1970s, being Ainu or part-Ainu was something people tried to conceal.
So languages are dying out all the time, but there's a counter-offensive.
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