Edwin Benson will wear a cap and gown for the first time in his life since majoring in the language, customs and traditions of the Nu'eta, a knowledge base passed to him from elders who lived in the last historic earthlodge village of the Three Affiliated Tribes in North Dakota.

Benson has been awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the University of North Dakota.

"If anyone deserves it, he deserves it," said Gerard Baker, a Mandan-Hidatsa and National Park Service superintendent at Mount Rushmore. "He's one of the best professors I've ever seen. It goes beyond the honorary caption. He goes way beyond a doctor in the academic sense."

Benson, 78, who lives in Twin Buttes on the Fort Berthold Reservation, has gained international stature for his vast knowledge of the Mandan and Hidatsa tribes. He's known for graciously sharing his knowledge with all people.

The North Dakota State Board of Higher Education recently voted unanimously to award Benson with the honorary doctorate. He will receive it Saturday during UND graduation ceremonies in Grand Forks.

"I had a white man call me with great news I never expected from a white man," Benson said in a phone interview from Twin Buttes Elementary School. "To be honest, I cried. I felt better after I cried. I didn't know how to accept it. It was like a dream, too good of a dream to be true, too good to wake up."

First language

Benson, born in 1931 on the Fort Berthold Reservation, grew up in the Little Missouri community, where the Little Missouri and big Missouri rivers met, an area now flooded.

He was raised by his grandparents, Buffalo Bull Head (Ben Benson), a Mandan, and Brown Chest, a Hidatsa woman. The first language Benson learned was Mandan. He also became fluent in English and Hidatsa. He also knows some Lakota and Arikara.

UND ranks among a growing legion of institutions and organizations that recognize the unique scholarship possessed by men like Benson. While Benson is a "living encyclopedia" of the Three Affiliated Tribes, he also is acknowledged as the last fluent male who learned Mandan as a first language.

Globally, 2,500 languages are on the brink of extinction, most of them indigenous languages. In the United States, 70 Native languages could disappear in the next decade, including the Mandan language, according to UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

"I'm the last one to be speaking the Nu'eta language," Benson said. "There's no one else for me to go talk to and converse fluently with. No more. I lead such a lonely life. It's sad that I can't speak my language that I knew, the first language that I knew, and to grow old with, to no one today. To no one at all. And it's a lonely life."

Held in respect

On Tuesday, Native language teachers from across the country will gather at the second annual National Native Language Revitalization Summit in Washington, D.C. Benson is scheduled to offer the summit's opening prayer in Mandan at the National Museum of the American Indian.

While UND has honored Benson, the elder has long held the highest degree of respect among the people of Fort Berthold, home of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation.

"Edwin is like a living encyclopedia, a living history book of all three tribes," said Pemina Yellow Bird, a Three Affiliated Tribes citizen, in a letter of support for the honorary degree.

Even though he could be fully retired, Benson continues to teach the Nu'eta language to students at the Twin Buttes Elementary School, a job he's had since 1991.

"When they say life is sacred, he acts like every day as sacred," said Chad Dahlen, principal at the Twin Buttes School. "For me, it's like that to be with him every day."

Benson ended his formal education before the eighth grade. He now attends the Congregational Church in Twin Buttes in the same building where he went to school. The building was moved to its present location after the federal government flooded the old school site near Benson's childhood home.

Even though the floodwaters washed away tribal communities and sacred sites, the memories and traditions remained with elders like Benson. He's widely noted for retaining a clear, sharp memory of the customs and language of the Nu'eta, which means "We the People."

Efforts to save it

The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara languages are taught at Fort Berthold Community College, which was awarded a one-year National Science Foundation grant to document the Mandan language.

Alyce Spotted Bear, vice president for indigenous studies at the college, said her goal is to establish an endowment and foundation for the Nu'eta, a famed agricultural tribe that lived in earthlodge villages along the Missouri River and its tributaries. The Nu'eta villages once served as a vast central marketplace for all trade on the Great Plains.

Twin Buttes remains the reservation community for the Nu'eta, which was home to Mattie Grinnell, the last full-blood Mandan. She lived to age 108. Her death in 1975 led to misinformed reports that the Mandan tribe was extinct, a myth perpetuated in academic books before her death.

The Mandans did survive, leaving about half of the 12,000 Three Affiliated Tribe citizens to claim Mandan bloodlines.

Responsibility

JoAnne Chase, former director of the National Congress of American Indians, applauds UND for recognizing Benson, but she also notes the urgency for everyone to ensure the Mandan cultural legacy continues to thrive. "It's important for us to exercise our own responsibility and own this," she said. "Let's be clear. Edwin is not a young man. And yet he is vibrant and in good health."

Benson may be one of the last fluent speakers, but he is not alone. A cadre of people around the country, including tribal citizens, academic scholars and conversational speakers, has been working with the elder to revitalize the language.

Cory Spotted Bear was first selected to work with Benson in 1998 as part of a master-apprentice program.

He has been working daily with Benson and now says his grasp of the Nu'eta language is staring to "snowball."

Meanwhile, Benson has long shared his knowledge of the Mandan with a large immediate and extended family; albeit, many of them didn't learn to speak Mandan.

"When we were small, we were always running around and listening to our mothers talk," said Ben Benson, a nephew to Edwin. "We spoke it when we were younger. And then we went to school in Halliday, we lost it. We never utiltized it. We were trying so hard to adapt being with the white kids."

Nobody could have predicted the language might end with his uncle Edwin.

Lanny Real Bird, an educator at Little Big Horn College in Crow Agency, whose mother is from Fort Berthold, has been working with the Fort Berthold Community College as part of an endangered language revitalization project.

Real Bird supports the idea of creating a foundation for the Mandan to foster a renaissance of the Nu'eta language.

He said the UND honorary degree should help propel the tribe's language revitalization efforts to a new level. "It's overdue," said Real Bird. "But it's also gracious and honorable the educational community of North Dakota and their university system recognizes the scholarship and the vast amount of oral and traditional knowledge as a valuable complement to higher education."

Experts and community members agree the Mandan language and Edwin Benson are racing against time.

But, it's still possible to revive the language. "I wish we could all learn Mandan," said Baker. "I have tapes. I have words. There may be a way some day. Maybe these young guys he's teaching right now will really go with it. I hope they do. There is always hope."