Prior Lake, MN – The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community today announced grants totaling $650,000 to 11 organizations which serve American Indians or offer information and services to the larger Community about American Indians.

The Division of Indian Work of Minneapolis, Minnesota, received two grants totaling $135,000 for program support and winter coats, hats, gloves, and mittens for American Indian students in the Minneapolis Public Schools who are eligible for free or reduced lunches. For more than 50 years the Division of Indian Work, in partnership with the Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches, has offered a variety of services for Native American families. Some of their other services include parenting and youth mentorship programs, a food shelf, emergency assistance, a group home for boys, daily summer activities for children, after school tutoring, cultural activities, holiday meal baskets, foster parents' licensing, and cooking classes.

Native Report, a television program out of WDSE-8 in Duluth, Minnesota, received a grant for $100,000 for operational support. The Native Report series is an entertaining, informative magazine style series that celebrates Native American culture and heritage, listens to tribal elders, and talks to some of the most powerful and influential leaders of Indian Country today. The series promotes understanding between cultures, tribes, and reservations; offers a venue for the stories of challenge and success coming from tribal communities; and educates public television viewers about the culture and traditions of native citizens. The Native Report series is offered at no charge to all public television stations in the United States and is currently seen in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, California, Wisconsin, Virginia, Alaska, California, New York, Florida, Wyoming, Utah, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

Great Plains Indian Gaming Association (GPIGA) of Bismarck, North Dakota received a grant for $95,000. Founded in 1997, GPIGA currently is composed of 28 Indian Nations within the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Wyoming, and Montana. The grant will be used to assist the GPIGA in protecting, preserving, and expanding their treaty rights through legal representation and for their annual trade show.

The Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center received $75,000 to support the Cherish the Children Learning Center. Offering childcare and Early Childhood Education primarily for women receiving services from the MIWRC, the Cherish the Children Learning Center is one of only a few culturally based early learning centers for Native American children in Hennepin County. The Center is currently licensed for up to 70 children and includes two infant rooms, a toddler room, a preschool room, and a “latchkey” room.

The staff includes a child development coordinator who assesses the children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development, provides follow-up screenings and documentation, develops individual learning plans in collaboration with classroom teachers, and schedules and implements education groups for special needs children. Although the center is open to all children, it is designed with an American Indian culturally appropriate atmosphere.

Flandreau Indian School received a grant for $65,000 for a behavior incentive program, senior class activities including a Commencement Pow Wow, and extracurricular activities including rodeo club, culture club, basketball, volleyball, golf, and cross-country. The Flandreau Indian School is the oldest continually operated federal Indian boarding school maintained by the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the U. S. Department of the Interior and is the only non reservation high school in the region. The Flandreau Indian School has had over 10,000 graduates since 1873.

Native Children’s Survival was pledged a $60,000 matching grant for their efforts to raise awareness about critical issues facing Mother Earth, her children, and the seventh generation to come. Their mission is achieved through the international language of music and film, and sustainable product development. Founded by musician Robby Romero in 1989, NCS creates award winning music, music videos, public service announcements, and rockumentary films that have reached millions of people from all walks of life through broadcasts on MTV, VH1, Sundance Channel, CNN, SABC Africa, and other networks around the world. (Funds for this grant will be released when a match has been made.)

The American Indian Community Housing Organization (AICHO) of Duluth, Minnesota, received $50,000 for its 29 units of permanent supportive housing and an American Indian cultural and community resource center. Gimaaji Mino-Bimaadiziyaan is the name for the housing project that means “together we are beginning a good life” in the Ojibwe Language.  AICHO is a non-profit, community based social service and housing development organization committed to improving the lives of Native American families in Northeastern Minnesota.  Since its inception in 1994, AICHO has provided supportive housing, emergency shelter, advocacy, and culturally appropriate services to about 200 Native American homeless women and children a year, many of whom are fleeing from domestic violence.

A grant for $25,000 to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts helped fund the Thaw collection, a visiting Indian art collection, which opened November 2, 2010 and will run through January 9, 2011. The exhibition consists of 110 of the most outstanding works of art drawn from the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of North American Indian Art, which comprises more than 800 masterpieces of Native American art from across North America spanning more than 2,000 years.  The Thaw Collection, organized by the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, is a broad survey that samples Native artistic accomplishment before and after the arrival of Europeans.

A donation of $20,000 to the American Indian Family Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, supported programs including women’s health, family support, youth, and employment services. In all programming the AIFC views each participant holistically, in the philosophy of the medicine wheel, which teaches that the four parts of each human being are important: physical, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual. AIFC serves 700 families a year, bringing traditional values to bear on modern challenges.

Naytahwaush Community Charter School was awarded a matching grant for $15,000 for iPad Touches and other Information Technology equipment for seven classrooms. This elementary school serves children grades kindergarten through sixth on the White Earth Reservation.

A $10,000 SMSC grant supported St. Stephen's Kateri  Residence, a halfway house in Minneapolis, which provides safe and sober housing to American Indian women recovering from chemical dependency. Kateri blends traditional recovery methods such as Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs with a focus on American Indian culture and spirituality as a means of healing.


About the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community

The SMSC utilizes its financial resources from gaming and non-gaming enterprises to pay for the internal infrastructure of the Tribe, including but not limited to roads, water and sewer systems, emergency services, and essential services to its Tribal members in education, health, and welfare. The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community has a charitable giving program which comes from a cultural and social tradition to assist those in need.

Over the past 13 years, the SMSC has donated more than $192.7 million to charitable organizations and Indian Tribes and Native American organizations. The SMSC has also made more than $389 million in loans to other tribes for economic development projects. Since 1996 the SMSC paid more than $6.6 million for shared local road construction projects and an additional $5 million for road projects on the reservation.

The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, a federally recognized Indian Tribe in Minnesota, is the owner and operator of Mystic Lake Casino Hotel, Little Six Casino, Playworks, Dakotah! Sport and Fitness, The Meadows at Mystic Lake, and other enterprises on a reservation south of the Twin Cities.