Nina Webster made her journey south
Posted: December 3rd, 2017, 7:58 amIt is with great sadness in my heart that I have to announce the loss of a dear friend and one of the administrators who established the Lakota language forum back in 2008. Nina Webster passed away at 2:29 in the morning on December 2nd, 2017. She was 79 years old.
Many of the members of the Lakota Language Forum remember Nina’s kind and devoted moderating and administrating of the forum. She was always encouraging to learners, super positive and always bringing out the best in people. And she was also passionate about the Lakota language and committed to helping it survive in any way she could.
Nina and I first got in touch in May 2002 when she e-mailed me some questions and comments regarding a Lakota language learning website I maintained at that time. It soon became obvious that Nina was very enthusiastic about learning Lakota and we started exchanging e-mails regularly, sharing ideas and feedback about our Lakota study. She also helped me with some projects, such as digitizing archival materials on Lakota and proofreading the Lakota lexical database. At that time Nina was still employed and was able to devote only a portion of her free time to these activities. But in 2007 she retired and she expressed her wish to contribute more volunteer based work towards various Lakota language projects. I think that at that time neither of us anticipated how much involved she would become and to how many projects she would eventually contribute. She helped tremendously with the Lakota Language textbook series, did an enormous amount of proofreading of the New Lakota Dictionary and Lakota Grammar Handbook, as well as many other projects. And her eye for catching typos and editing problems was increadible.
Nina’s knowledge of Lakota increased rapidly and over the years she developed such a deep understanding of Lakota grammar that she was able to provide highly informed feedback on content of textbooks and grammars. During many of the projects I was basically in a daily contact with her via Skype, discussing edits, brainstorming and making improvements. I remember that whenever I was out of ideas or inspiration as to how to present certain things in a project I would just call Nina and discuss it with her and all of a sudden a solution presented itself. Brainstorming about creative projects with others always helps, but Nina was special in her ability to analyze whatever issue and provide great feedback on it.
She didn’t have an academic background, but the more deeply she studied the language, the more obvious it became that she had a great capacity to approach things at a very high intellectual level. During the seventh decade of her life, she learned to understand complexities of Lakota morphology and syntax at a level where she was not only able to provide feedback to pedagogical materials but also to highly technical linguistic papers. She even bought linguistic books to educate herself further. Yet, she was always very humble about her knowledge and often apprehensive about new projects, questioning whether she would have the skills and knowledge necessary to help with them. Back in 2002 she was new to computers and only knew how to do some very basic things on them. But during her work on the projects she learned to work with a tremendous amount of software utilities.
At first, Nina and I were merely sharing our enthusiasms for the language. But very early on we really clicked and became very close friends. Even before her retirement I invited her to come and visit me and my family. She came several times and became fond of my wife and children. We returned the visit on a number of occasions, too, and my children would call her "Aunty Nina". Nina was the kind of person who is fun to be around. Over the years she provided a lot of support for me, not only practical support on the projects but also emotional support during times of professional or personal struggle. I will miss her greatly.
Nina’s contribution to the Lakota language is vast. She was one of the people who felt that those coming to the realm of Lakota language revitalization from the outside community have a responsibility to not only show respect to the language by learning it well, but also to volunteer their time and effort to help the native community preserve their language. And she stood by that conviction till her last days.
Jan
Many of the members of the Lakota Language Forum remember Nina’s kind and devoted moderating and administrating of the forum. She was always encouraging to learners, super positive and always bringing out the best in people. And she was also passionate about the Lakota language and committed to helping it survive in any way she could.
Nina and I first got in touch in May 2002 when she e-mailed me some questions and comments regarding a Lakota language learning website I maintained at that time. It soon became obvious that Nina was very enthusiastic about learning Lakota and we started exchanging e-mails regularly, sharing ideas and feedback about our Lakota study. She also helped me with some projects, such as digitizing archival materials on Lakota and proofreading the Lakota lexical database. At that time Nina was still employed and was able to devote only a portion of her free time to these activities. But in 2007 she retired and she expressed her wish to contribute more volunteer based work towards various Lakota language projects. I think that at that time neither of us anticipated how much involved she would become and to how many projects she would eventually contribute. She helped tremendously with the Lakota Language textbook series, did an enormous amount of proofreading of the New Lakota Dictionary and Lakota Grammar Handbook, as well as many other projects. And her eye for catching typos and editing problems was increadible.
Nina’s knowledge of Lakota increased rapidly and over the years she developed such a deep understanding of Lakota grammar that she was able to provide highly informed feedback on content of textbooks and grammars. During many of the projects I was basically in a daily contact with her via Skype, discussing edits, brainstorming and making improvements. I remember that whenever I was out of ideas or inspiration as to how to present certain things in a project I would just call Nina and discuss it with her and all of a sudden a solution presented itself. Brainstorming about creative projects with others always helps, but Nina was special in her ability to analyze whatever issue and provide great feedback on it.
She didn’t have an academic background, but the more deeply she studied the language, the more obvious it became that she had a great capacity to approach things at a very high intellectual level. During the seventh decade of her life, she learned to understand complexities of Lakota morphology and syntax at a level where she was not only able to provide feedback to pedagogical materials but also to highly technical linguistic papers. She even bought linguistic books to educate herself further. Yet, she was always very humble about her knowledge and often apprehensive about new projects, questioning whether she would have the skills and knowledge necessary to help with them. Back in 2002 she was new to computers and only knew how to do some very basic things on them. But during her work on the projects she learned to work with a tremendous amount of software utilities.
At first, Nina and I were merely sharing our enthusiasms for the language. But very early on we really clicked and became very close friends. Even before her retirement I invited her to come and visit me and my family. She came several times and became fond of my wife and children. We returned the visit on a number of occasions, too, and my children would call her "Aunty Nina". Nina was the kind of person who is fun to be around. Over the years she provided a lot of support for me, not only practical support on the projects but also emotional support during times of professional or personal struggle. I will miss her greatly.
Nina’s contribution to the Lakota language is vast. She was one of the people who felt that those coming to the realm of Lakota language revitalization from the outside community have a responsibility to not only show respect to the language by learning it well, but also to volunteer their time and effort to help the native community preserve their language. And she stood by that conviction till her last days.
Jan
Many many times she coordinated me to the right path when my translation or concept was a complete miss, politely, with contribution.