Notes from Indian Country
And now the Churches are looking for reconciliation?
Monday, April 11, 2022
Someone asked what the Lakota word ahhkahneeah meant. I can’t even tell you if I spelled it right in this sentence. What does the word mean?
The best way to explain it is that it is more of an emotion than a word. For instance: A Lakota woman sees a young child who is really cute and she says, “I just want to ahhkahneeah him.”
She is saying that she would just like to hug him or squeeze his cheeks or words to that affect.
When I was a child at the Indian boarding school we would say “Ookh.” It is probably a derivation of a Lakota word. It had many meanings to us as boys. It could mean “Really” or “I believe it.” Or if the boy dragged out the word like OOoookh, it would then mean “That is a bunch of bull.

Tim Giago is an Oglala Lakota. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in the Class of 1991. His book “Children Left Behind, the Dark Legacy of the Indian Missions” is available at: order@clearlightbooks.com. The book won the Bronze Star from the Independent Publishers Awards. He can be reached at najournalist1@gmail.com
Note: Content © Tim Giago

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