Per Minnesota Law, the Minnesota Humanities Center administers a competitive Arts and Cultural Heritage Grants Program-Councils of Color. The Humanities Center uses a portion of the funds to provide grants administration, including releasing an RFP, overseeing the proposal process, coordination of the independent review panel, agreement drafting, financial and program monitoring, and reporting.
-Strengthen community capacity to revitalization Dakota language in MN
-Nurture language skills of 15 Dakota language leaders
-Create safe and secure Dakota-speaking community-based working environment that actively engages 10 beginning to fluent speakers
-Grow speaking and teaching skills for 8 intermediate Dakota language learners
The language and cultural needs of the American Indian community in the Twin Cities urban area are high. Additionally, the urban area has Dakota and Ojibwe tribal members, as well as, other tribal members.
The primary project of the Bagidinise Project is to add wood to the fire of learning and revitalization of the Ojibwe language sparked by the Ishkodeke Project. Short term goals are to continue to create high school level curriculum for two more Ojibwe language classes, Ojibwe III and IV, to expand the Ojibwe I offering by an additional section.
-Expand American Indian studies curriculum
-Support college student fluency of Dakota and Ojibwe languages
-Support a pre-doctoral fellow to develop curriculum and begin to offer Dakota I and II and UMM
-Create a structure to support the development of leaders in the language-learning community
-Develop partnerships with local area tribal communities
