The 57th Annual Dakota Conference, April 24-25, 2025, invites presentations relating to "Settling and Resettling the Plains," and on other topics about the history and cultures of South Dakota and the Northern Plains.
2025 marks the centennial of the publication of O.E. Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth, the iconic novel about homesteading the prairie-plains. (The novel is set on land just to the north of Sioux Falls.) In celebration, the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra will be performing the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera by Douglas Moore based on the novel. The symphony invited the Center for Western Studies to join in partnership through its unique programming. 2025 is also the bicentennial of Norwegian immigration to America (1825-2025), and Norway, itself, will be observing the occasion, especially the Norwegian Emigrant Museum, in Hedmark, Norway.
To commemorate the novel's publication, the opera's performance, Norwegian emigration — and as a prelude to CWS's observance of America's 250th anniversary in 2026 — CWS is dedicating the 2025 Dakota Conference, April 24-25, to the major themes explored in the novel — immigration, settlement and homesteading, specifically in the Northern Plains.
Today we understand that the Plains were settled and resettled numerous times over millennia by various Paleoindian, historical Native American and Euroamerican settlers, and today's immigrants from Guatemala, Mexico, the Philippines, Sudan and Ethiopia.
