The Niibi Center is requesting $54,800 in funding (Competitive) from the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council to design, evaluate and launch a four session Intensive Instructor Practicum and Language Blast weekend program to supplement our emerging home based, family focused language immersion program on White Earth Reservation. Our immersion program, Ayaanikeshkaagewaad, (meaning 'the next ones in succession') is a recently launched project of the Niibi Center. Ayaanikeshkaagewaad seeks to take a new approach to revitalizing Anishinaabe culture and language on White Earth.
A traveling exhibit was developed to display museum-quality copies of fragile artifacts recovered from the archaeological site: Roosevelt Shores 21-CW-173. The exhibit tells the story of 2000 years (up through the late 1800's) of American history at the site.
The Minnesota legislature appropriated $198,000 for four projects: 1) Pavilion Preservation Project; 2) Zoo Main Building Planning Project; 3) Zoo Environmental Education Expansion; and 4) Zoo Cultural Research Project.
The Lake Superior Zoo is northern Minnesota’s zoo, which is fully accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. The Bear Country project will create educational exhibits using animals and the environment within a portion of the area of land that is currently the former Polar Shores. The project will utilize some of this existing structure by renovating it to meet or exceed current animal exhibit standards for the brown bear set by the Association of Zoo and Aquariums (AZA). Legacy funds will be used to complete phase one of the bear country project.
Veterans on the Lake Resort, a not-for-profit resort, will provide a barrier-free setting for a memorable outdoor recreation experience for disabled persons, with priority to disabled veterans, veterans, their families, friends and supporters; designed with veterans in mind, recognizing what they have contributed to and sacrificed for our nation; ensuring that they can fully participate in Minnesota's outdoor cultural heritage.
Projects:
Well drilling to provide larger reservoir of water to meet peak demand
To initiate research at five adjacent archaeological sites in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, which will inform an eventual National Register of Historic Places nomination.
The goal of this project is teacher training through the Master/Apprentice approach to language proficiency in concurrence with observation and lesson pilot at Head Start and regional language immersion sites. The objectives of this project are to increase the Ojibwe language and cultural proficiency in two apprentices and fluency in two master speakers and to partners with the Language Preservation Group and Red Lake Head Start to integrate Master/Apprentice teams into the Head start site, while also supporting the Head Start objectives of child development and school readiness.
A series of three bilingual (English/Spanish) heritage-discovery walks have been selected and sixty plaques have been erected that tell the history and evolution of Lake Street. The historical markers include information and photographs of the area, as well as specific buildings both past and present. The walking tours are designed to educate, to foster a sense of historical identity and to encourage preservation of local historic sites. Brochures of the walking tours are available to the public free of charge at local businesses.
Leech Lake Tribal College is commiteed to the goal of ensuring that Ojibwemowin remains a vital part of our culture for generations to come. This grant will play an important role in complementing that work and helping LLTC make Ojibwemowin more accessible to our community. The purpose of our grant propsal is to create more and varied learning opportunites accessible to students, staff, and community members in order to create more Ojibwemowin learners and speakers.
The historic marker, installed along Cottonwood County Road 29, documents the WPA project to recreate Mountain Lake as firsthand memory of the manmade lake's contruction fades away.
In the second phase of an oral history project, Life in Lake Sarah, four additional residents were interviewed and recorded. The recordings were transcribed along with two earlier interviews. The six recordings were compiled in booklet form and added to the permanent collection of the Murray County Historical Society.
To build a mobile stage with lighting and sound to use for musical events or plays. The traveling stage will be used to increase access to arts and cultural heritage programming at the fair and around the county.
Dakota Wicohan created the first half of a leadership and civics curriculum for Dakota youth—Dakota Itancan Kagapi, or, the making of Dakota leaders. The program will be used to train Dakota youth through the inter-related strategies of remembering, reclaiming, and reconnecting with our Dakota language and lifeways to enhance the region’s civic foundation.
To hire qualified consultants to evaluate submerged cultural resources in Lake Minnetonka for possible inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places.
The grant was used to hire a qualified contractor through a competitive bidding process to construct a protective overhead canopy in order to preserve the J. Neils/Red Lake (Ojibwe Nation) Sawmill and equipment.
