Experiencing the Pine Ridge Reservation with Students

January 26, 2024

• 2:00 pm-3:00 pm Eastern
• 1:00 pm-2:00pm Central
• 12pm-1:00 pm Mountain
• 11:00 am-12:00 pm Pacific

Please join us for a special January session of our Global Studies Virtual Symposium, an event that connects global studies scholars and educators across community college campuses nationwide. The symposium offers an engaging teaching and learning forum for sharing best practices, ideas, and resources with colleagues.

Beginning in the spring of 2016, Dr Amy Magnus created a new course at South Central College entitled: Dakota History, Culture and Language. This course had several goals: to teach the Dakota history and culture, to introduce students to the Dakota language, (with an Upper Sioux tribal member) and to engage in some sort of trip/service learning opportunity on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Over seventy-five students took part in this experience and were introduced to Lakota culture, visited historic sites like the Wounded Knee Massacre Memorial, and spent a day volunteering at one of the reservation elementary schools. This presentation will discuss this experience.

Dr. Amy Magnus has been teaching at South Central College in North Mankato, Minnesota, for over twenty years. With a Ph.D. in Multi-Cultural literature from Case Western Reserve University and a credential in American Indian Studies, she has created the American Indian Studies courses at the college. Teaching these courses as well as film, English classes, and American Racial Minorites, Dr. Magnus works to share these cultures with her students both in and out of the classroom.  As the coordinator of the SCC Global Conference, a large two-day event that occurs every two years, she has worked to bring artists, musicians, and speakers from other cultures and backgrounds to the campus. She has also created courses that seek to include learning outside the classroom, such as an Indigenous Cuisine course she created for SCC’s Culinary Program, and the course she will be talking about today, Dakota History, Culture and Language, a class that includes a service-learning opportunity and trip to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.