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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 Native Americans 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. Therefore, it is imperative that we center our efforts toward the recruitment and retention of Native American students to the nursing profession workforce. Unfortunately, nurse educators at SDSU College of Nursing are not adequately prepared to teach in a culturally responsive manner, potentially hindering Native American students’ academic success.

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

Project Director: Jon Stauff

The SDSU Office of International Affairs 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.
• Developing capacity to serve Native American students interested in a short- or long-term education abroad program, including resource development, financial support and predeparture activities to prepare Native American students for the academic experience abroad.

The project will allow the Office of International Affairs 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 the Office of International Affairs 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 four 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.
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 Multicultural Affairs and Accessibility has identified increased enrollment, retention and graduation of students from historically underrepresented groups as an important strategic goal. While 9% of South Dakota’s population identifies as Native American/Alaska Native, less than 1% 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 varied 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 Native American/Alaska Native students (mentees) will be provided with a support team comprised of three individuals. Waokiyes (peer counselors) are upper-class Native American/Alaska Native students who have completed a peer counseling training program. Student ambassadors/tutors (allies) 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.
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.