Wokini Challenge Grants Awarded

Project Director: Karla Hunter

The proposed project would bolster the ongoing efforts of the Harnessing Hope project (partly funded by the Waterhouse Family Institute) to foster South Dakota tribal communities’ fulfillment of their own priorities, specifically as they relate to educational persistence. The project’s essential aims are:

• Archiving oral histories by dialoguing with American Indian college graduates about hope and persistence through educational attainment.
• Working together with dialogue partners to ensure we represent their stories as they would like them to be represented through the archives we plan to develop.
• Harnessing those archived stories in hopes of working with Tribal College and University faculty to co-create and test educational interventions.

The proposed Wokini funding would enable expanded partnerships with SDSU’s American Indian students and the American Indian Student Center, engaging SDSU faculty and staff mentors for leadership and skill development toward partnership-building and visual storytelling/oral history archiving. These mentors would guide, while also learning from, those students in relationship building with South Dakota tribes and other American Indian college students/graduates and their communities to create a foundation for long-term impact beyond the grant cycle.

Project Director: Valeriah Big Eagle

Promoting diversity in the nursing workforce can improve health outcomes. However, ethnic minorities are disproportionately underrepresented in nursing, this is especially apparent in South Dakota where only 2% of the nursing workforce identifies as Native American (NA). Therefore, it is imperative that we center our efforts toward the recruitment and retention of NA students to the nursing profession to promote diversity in the workforce. Unfortunately, nurse educators at SDSU College of Nursing (CON) are not adequately prepared to teach in a culturally responsive manner, potentially hindering NA students’ academic success.

The overarching purpose of this project is to increase the recruitment and retention of NA students at SDSU-CON in Rapid City. We will do this by providing a shared educational cultural experience for nurse educators, staff and NA nursing students. This shared educational cultural experience specific to the NA population will increase CON (Rapid City) faculty/staff cultural competence and awareness and promote NA nursing students’ cultural identity. We will assess faculty/staff cultural competence pre/post-experience and cultural identity of NA nursing students pre/post-experience.

Project Director: Jon Stauff

The SDSU Office of International Affairs (OIA) will hire two Native American students to assist with two potentially sustainable projects:

• Connecting international students (both degree-seeking students and exchange students) to Native American cultures during their time in South Dakota, and
• Developing capacity to serve Native American students interested in a short- or long-term education abroad program, including resource development, financial support and pre-departure activities to prepare Native American students for the academic experience abroad.

The project will allow OIA to present a more complete picture of American culture to its international population while providing opportunities for real-time cultural exchange between international and Native American students. For Native students, the project will introduce Native students intentionally to the benefits of education abroad and develop the capacity of OIA to promote its programming to this group – vastly underrepresented locally and nationally among those participating in education abroad. The Native American students hired to work on this project will gain experience working with seasoned educators in promoting cultural interaction while gaining practical experience in marketing, communications and program assessment.

Project Director: Ruben Behnke

The South Dakota Mesonet is a network of 45 weather stations (including 4 that are tribal partnerships) across the state that provides real-time weather conditions. We propose to translate real-time weather conditions from the website dashboard page, such as temperature, sky condition (sunny, partly cloudy, etc.), sun and moon phase, wind and precipitation, to the Lakota language. Clicking on particular words would play a recording of a native Lakota speaker properly saying the word. This project would serve as a pilot project for two purposes:

1. to expand the translation of weather conditions to more pages of South Dakota Mesonet and
2. to expand the translation to more Sioux dialects.

This project involves collaboration between the Pine Ridge Reservation, an SDSU Sioux student and South Dakota Mesonet. The Pine Ridge Reservation Sioux Tribe member will provide Lakota translation, and the student will assist with Mesonet/Tribe communication, editing of recorded words and presentation of project results.

Project Director: Emmeline Weber

The Knowledge Circle would feature rotating exhibits and selections from the library’s American Indian collections. Short double-sided bookcases may be arranged in the eight-sided pattern of an Oceti Sakowin Oyate camp circle. As with the camp circle’s entrance, one side of the Knowledge Circle would remain open so that visitors can access items on both sides of the bookshelves. An American Indian student assistant would be hired to take a leading role in the formation of this area. With mentorship and training from three Briggs Library faculty and staff, the student would choose and create four themed physical displays for the Knowledge Circle.

The student would also produce an online research guide that contains the exhibit information. Briggs Library would seek an American Indian elder as a consultant to review the exhibits for cultural appropriateness prior to display. To enhance the American Indian collections, the student would research and suggest new library materials to purchase, including items such as books, e-books, videos and games.

Project Director: Polly Davis

The SDSU Office of Diversity, Inclusion, Equity and Access has identified increased enrollment, retention and graduation of students from historically underrepresented groups as an important strategic goal. While nine percent of South Dakota’s population identifies as Native American/Alaska Native, less than one percent of this demographic is represented among the SDSU student body. This disparity has significant and wide-ranging implications for the Native American community which continues to experience high levels of poverty (Fish, 2018) high mortality, poor physical health, depression, drug abuse, sexual violence and suicide (Findling et al., 2019).

Native American student retention is positively influenced by a number of factors including self-relevant role models (Covarrubias, Fryberg & Lee 2015), academic skill development, family and peer support, a culturally sensitive school environment (Mosholder & Goslin 2014) and diverse and frequent student/faculty interactions (Lundberg & Lowe, 2016). Witaya seeks to improve Native American student retention through a team-based, peer counseling and mentorship support network. Incoming NA/AN students (Mentee’s) will be provided with a support team comprised of three individuals. Waokiye’s (Peer Counselors) are upper class NA/AN students who have completed a peer counseling training program. Student Ambassadors/Tutors (Ally’s) provide academic and general support. Mentors (ksape) function as role models providing cultural and professional guidance.

Project Director: Lan Xu

Native American tribal populations face greater health concerns compared to other population groups in the U.S. One of many reasons is the lack to access to safe drinking water. In addition, contamination is an issue because most of the tribal lands are located coincidently in heavy-metal mineral deposits of the western United States. Groundwater contamination occurs naturally due to mineral dissolution, leaching, and transport in areas with high concentrations. Quantifying factors that control contaminant mobilization as well as transport pathways are critical to risk assessment and developing a management plan.

This proposal will support the research data collection for a current Native American master graduate student from Oglala Sioux Tribe to:

1. complete geochemical groundwater modeling and spatial analysis of the Arikaree Aquifer on the Pine Ridge Reservation,
2. conduct risk assessment for vulnerabilities identified in the Arikaree Aquifer, Sand Hill Area, Southeastern South Dakota, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, and
3. determine the best outreach approach to engage the Pine Ridge community in protecting and managing their natural resources.

Results of the groundwater model will be disseminated to the Oglala Lakota Tribe.

Project Director: Kari O'Neill

The Lakota Agricultural Resiliency Leadership Institute project takes a unique approach of working intensely with young adults as they learn about Tribal food systems and build leadership skills. The project will utilize a Train-the-Trainer strategy which requires student participants to develop action plans to teach new groups what they have learned.

The program will select six young people from each Reservation to become future food system leaders. They will attend a series of six classes during late summer that include topics from collecting elder stories to cooking traditional meals to marketing cooperatively. 

Targeted participants will be late high school or early college students. One-third of participants will be recruited from SDSU’s campuses. The cultural leadership program will culminate in a joint celebration of both Reservations’ foods. At that time students will share their action plans for passing on new knowledge and start planning to showcase a traditional meal at Wagner Café at SDSU. The long-term goal is program continuation through additional funding, leading to new cooperative business development on both Reservations through youth entrepreneurial food-related projects.

Project Director: Maribeth Latvis 

In Natural Science discourse there are currently no written best practices on how scientific natural history collections obtain and record Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) from Indigenous communities. This project will address this problem by working with Indigenous communities to develop this language.

To accomplish this, we will assemble a small group of Indigenous peoples from the Oceti Sakowin who can help to identify best practices for the collection, storage and dissemination for TEK, medicinal plants and other culturally sensitive material at the Spring 2021 Spring Indigenizing Spaces Research Summit. We will also hire two student workers to help prepare the C. A. Taylor Herbarium for digitization and identify any possible sensitive Indigenous knowledge that may be of concern in the public sphere.

This research will provide the basis for the dissemination of these best practices and a case study for how other Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers can go about negotiating similar relationships in other areas of the world. The student Research Assistants would learn the skills of cataloging and digitizing biological collections, relationship building between Indigenous communities and biologists, and the process of writing scholarly material.

Project Director: Jodi Lundgren

The South Dakota Art Museum will hire two SDSU American Indian students as Wokini Curatorial and Programming Assistants during the 2020–2021 academic year. These students will serve as researchers, liaisons, collaborators and/or project coordinators, depending on their individual areas of interest and expertise. Students will be invited to explore the American Indian perspectives embodied in the museum’s archives, collections, exhibitions and programming, identify projects of interest and relevance to them, and lead the development or evolution of those projects under the guidance of museum staff and external American Indian partners.

The museum has an excellent record of working with American Indian partners throughout its 50-year history and is home to several collections of American Indian artworks, including historical and contemporary works of local to national significance. It hosts temporary exhibitions of American Indian artworks, including three exhibitions slated for FY2021. Employing Wokini Curatorial and Programming Assistants would help strengthen the network of relationships between the museum community and resources, American Indian students, SDSU faculty and staff, and American Indian partners outside of the university.

Project Director: Michele Christian

This project, “Impact Through Preservation: Training American Indian Student Assistants for Tribal Archives and Tribal Historic Preservation Offices,” with the South Dakota State University Archives and Special Collections (Archives) proposes to hire two American Indian student assistants to receive specialized training that will later be applied to educational fieldwork at tribal archives and tribal historic preservation offices (THPOs). In the 2020-2021 academic year, Archives will train these students in fundamental archival, preservation and digitization principles and methods. The work will allow the students to learn new skills, as well as result in additional SDSU materials made freely available to researchers worldwide. The students will be paired with tribal archives and THPOs in or near their hometowns. When the academic year is finished and the students return home, they will use their training to assist with processing materials at these tribal archives and THPOs until the end of FY21.

Project Director: Patrick Hales 

This project would help to create a planning team composed of university faculty, American Indian students at SDSU, and Native American communities in South Dakota. This team would be tasked with forming ideas for designing a pathway for American Indians living in tribal communities, particularly our initial partner in Lower Brule, to earn degrees and certification in teacher education through SDSU.

This project is driven by the community need in Lower Brule for a pathway to degrees and certification in teacher education. Faculty from SDSU would travel to these partner locations, especially our initial partner in Lower Brule, as part of this planning. This planning would involve curriculum development, technology solutions, cultural discourse and project goal alignment. The goal of this planning team, which would meet throughout the year from August 2020 until May 2021, would be to create a proposal for developing a program for students to complete teacher education preparation through SDSU in partnership, potentially in partnership with tribal colleges.

Project Director: Nicole Lounsbery 

This project addresses the confluence of two major trends that affect the Indian Country: the incredible increase in data about Native people and tribal lands and the drive for data sovereignty among Native nations. Finding a way to forge agreements at the confluence of these trends is critical to both Tribal sovereignty and our ability to work together to discover new knowledge.

This project proposal seeks funding to address the challenges related to both the increase in data collection and accessibility, and the need to understand existing protocols, create new protocols and develop appropriate training for current and future researchers. Our goal is to bring together tribal government and tribal college representatives from across the state to develop a multi-faceted strategic plan addressing data sovereignty issues, including training that can be integrated into grant routing processes, creation of curriculum materials that can be integrated into research methods courses, support for tribal government and tribal college research offices to develop and implement processes and procedures, and the creation of research networks across institutions that address tribal concerns and issues.

Project Director: Michele Christian

Building upon the success of its 2018-2019 Wokini Challenge Grant (which allowed for the employment of American Indian students to digitize the papers of Ben Reifel, a prominent Lakota politician), Archives wishes to again hire American Indian student assistants to organize, preserve and digitize original source materials related to its American Indian collections.

Students will learn new analytical, technical and archival skills. They will prepare the materials for digitization, scan the materials and add the new digital items to the Archives’ public digital collections. Students will work to preserve and digitize the records of the Oak Lake Writers Society, SDSU American Indian Student Association and the American Indian Student Center.

Project Director: Kristi Cammack

Native Americans are underrepresented in higher education and have lower rates of college entry, retention and graduation. Maintaining cultural connections is an important factor in the success of Native American college students.

Our objective is to create a sustainable agriculture, natural resources and leadership certificate program that honors and incorporates Native American traditions and practices. This program will be delivered annually by SDSU faculty in partnership with the Indian University of North America (IUNA) in the Black Hills, an area rich in Native history and culture.

We will use a blended approach that includes culturally-enhanced coursework and hands-on activities to engage students in problem-based learning. The semester will culminate in a cooperative field experience that partners students with regional Native American professionals to apply knowledge learned to address complex issues in Native communities. Students will reside and take coursework at IUNA to impart a Native American immersion experience.

The Maka program will offer Native American students a connection to their heritage and culture during their college experience, creating an opportunity to improve retention and graduation rates - a goal of SDSU's Wokini Initiative.

Project Director: Christi Garst-Santos

Geographical sites play an important role in the construction of historical memory and cultural identity. These sites, which are often denominated as public lands, have been protected precisely because of their contributions to national identity and cultural heritage.

In “Sustaining Geographies of Hope: Cultural Resources on Public Lands,” Sandra B. Zellmer argues that, for many American Indian tribes, “[t]he land has represented an unparalleled bulwark against the otherwise inevitable effects of colonization—tribal eradication and assimilation. American Indian cultural interests in the public lands deserve special consideration, given their unique associations with the land and its resources, and the political and legal obligations arising from the historic treatment of tribes, their treaties, and their continuing sovereign status” (414). Although Zellmer uses the land-culture connection to argue for legal intervention, this project uses the land-culture connection to argue for cultural intervention.

Project participants seek funding to retell and rewrite tribal historical memory and cultural identity at the Pipestone National Monument. In particular, we seek to work with tribal elders and students from the Oceti Sakowin on a project to gather oral histories that will be used to create new, culturally authentic park materials in English and Lakota as well as French, German and Spanish.

Project Director: Joshua Reineke

The proposed project is to host a kick-off summit and initiate a professional development program at the interface of American Indian storytelling and scientific communication. There are many existing threads of commonality between indigenous storytelling and effective scientific communication practices. An American Indian student cohort will participate in oral history and communication professional development, provide input on summit organization, assist in program/summit assessment and lead tribal outreach storytelling activities.

The summit will include speakers with expertise in indigenous storytelling, scientific communication and at least one speaker working at that interface. Through these activities the proposal seeks to gain engagement of a broad campus community with American Indian culture while fostering American Indian student development and cultural pride.

A post-program/summit assessment and strategic meeting will provide a blueprint for the development of a future professional development program where American Indian students are developed as effective storytellers and communicators that will then have a leadership opportunity in assisting facilitation of scientific communication professional development activities for students broadly in the science fields.

Project Director: Jenn Anderson

The “#MyCommunityMyStory” project connects college hopefuls from the Oglala Sioux Nation (OSN) with Wokini Scholars from SDSU to create a traveling photovoice exhibit that will visually share the stories they choose to share. Everyone involved with the project (faculty, participants, community leaders) will share expertise and experiences to learn more about storytelling, photography, photo-editing, the OSN, and the Wokini Initiative. The Wokini Scholars and college hopefuls will determine the focus of the storytelling and choose how their work is shared.

Project leaders from SDSU will lead workshops in the areas of photography and photo-editing. OSN leaders and/or elders, in partnership with SDSU project leaders, will provide guidance and wisdom related to storytelling. SDSU leaders will focus on visual storytelling through photos; OSN leaders will focus on unique features of OSN storytelling, celebrating their cultural identity. Photovoice exhibits at SDSU and at the OSN will feature the work of participants who want to share it.

Through the learning activities, the informal conversations, and the exhibits/celebrations in this project, we hope everyone involved will come away with not only with enhanced photography skills and a greater understanding of the OSN and Wokini Initiative, but also with a new circle of friends.

Project Director: Mark Freeland

This project will fund two American Indian Research Assistants during the 2019-2020 academic year. These positions provide leadership opportunities for American Indian students as they develop the professional skills for their future careers.

• One student will provide leadership in the Lakota Language classes (LAKL 101 and 102) as a facilitator of class time. This student will also plan and facilitate a Lakota language-speaking group for other students interested in Lakota language.
• The other position will be an American Indian Studies Program Research Assistant. This student will develop and execute a research project under the guidance of American Indian Studies faculty. They will also help to plan the Indigenizing Spaces Fall Symposium and Spring Summit. At the Spring Summit, they will present their research to the South Dakota State Community.