|
|
Contact: Bruce Conley
Associate Director of College Relations
Phone: (605) 274-5526
Fax: (605) 274-4903
www.augie.edu
March 28, 2006
SIOUX FALLS – The 150th anniversary of the founding of Sioux Falls will be celebrated at a conference on “The Urban Plains,” to be held in Sioux Falls, April 21-22.
More than 80 speakers, from as many as 10 states and two European countries, will address the theme of urbanization of the Northern Plains and other topics related to the region at the Dakota Conference, sponsored by the Center for Western Studies at Augustana College.
The keynote address on Sioux Falls will be delivered by historian Gary D. Olson, whose talk, “The Rise of Sioux Falls: An Urban Success Story,” will be the dinner address on Friday, April 21. Olson, professor emeritus at Augustana, is the author of “Sioux Falls, South Dakota: A Pictorial History” and the chapter on cities and towns in “A New South Dakota History.”
Other Sioux Falls topics include the Sioux Falls Army Air Base, city booster and senator Richard F. Pettigrew, author and ornithologist Herbert Krause, Sioux Falls History Club, and historic preservation. Several papers will treat Minnehaha County history as well, including Victorian decorative arts and Norwegian settlement.
As Dakota Conference director Harry Thompson notes, the conference theme is derived from the realization that the Northern Plains states of Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, and the Dakotas are undergoing a major demographic shift, in which residents are moving in significant numbers from rural communities and small towns to the cities.
In South Dakota, for instance, the majority of the population is urban. In fact, a quarter of the population of the state now resides within the environs of the state’s largest city, Sioux Falls.
Nearly another quarter of the state’s population resides in just eight cities, with
the majority living in the Rapid City area. Moreover, approximately a quarter of South Dakota’s 75,000 Native American residents live in cities, with the greatest number living in Rapid City.
Tim Giago, award-winning Oglala Sioux journalist and former editor and publisher of “Indian Country Today,” will speak on “The Making of the Urban Indian” with
special reference to Rapid City. Other cities featured at the conference include Brookings, Fort Pierre, and Deadwood.
The Northern Plains Autograph Party, featuring 25 authors of books about the region, will be held on Saturday morning, April 22.
The Dakota Conference and autograph party are open to the public.
For additional information, contact the Center of Western Studies at (605) 274-4007, or view the conference program at http://www.augie.edu/cws/38DakotaConf.pdf.
Major funding for the Dakota Conference comes from the South Dakota Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities; the City of Deadwood Historic Preservation Commission; Richard and Michelle Van Demark; and the Mellon Fund Committee of Augustana College.