The Dakota Studies Inaugural Ceremony is scheduled for Tuesday, Aug. 25, at 4:30 p.m. at NDSU’s Grandmother Earth’s Gift of Life Garden at the corner of Centennial Boulevard and Administration Avenue. The ceremony will celebrate the beginning of Dakota Studies at NDSU.

A drum honor song will open and close the event, and a Dakota blessing will be given by Clifford Canku, assistant professor of practice in Dakota Studies.

During the 2009-10 academic year, Canku will teach Dakota Studies courses in Dakota language, tribal history, Dakota sociology and anthropology, and Dakota religious studies. The courses will complement the long-standing American Indian programs in engineering and pharmacy.

Canku is an experienced teacher of Dakota courses at Sisseton-Wahpeton College in Agency Village, S.D., University of Minnesota-Morris and Southwestern State University in Marshall, Minn. He is an enrolled member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate. He earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from University of Minnesota, Morris, and a master of divinity from the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary in Iowa. He also holds an honorary doctorate from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.

The Dakota Studies courses are part of President Joseph A. Chapman’s goal to reach out to tribal colleges in the state to set up articulation agreements so students can earn associates degrees at the tribal college and continue on toward four-year degrees at NDSU. Chapman and others instrumental in bringing Dakota studies to NDSU will speak at the ceremony.

A reception will follow in the Memorial Union’s Arikara Room.