(Dowagiac, Mich., Feb. 03, 2025) — Bodwé Group companies Blue Star Integrative Studio (BSIS) and Seven Generations A+E (7GAE) announced today that they will be conducting five community engagement workshops in Rapid City, SD to collect and assess community feedback regarding a memorial to honor the original Sioux Sanatorium (Sioux San) hospital building. Four workshops are set to be held in the Conference Center at the Oyate Health Center, and one workshop will be held virtually.
Located on the southern end of the Oyate Health Center campus, the memorial site currently stands empty, as the former Sanatorium building was demolished in April 2023. The Sioux Sanatorium was built in 1938 as a tuberculosis hospital for Native patients in the region and was later converted into a general hospital, before finally becoming an outpatient clinic. The building continued to serve the community in this capacity and provided a consistent landmark on the hilltop overlooking Sioux San and Canyon Lake Drives until its demolition. Over the course of its life, Sioux San touched generations of Tribal Citizens living in the region.
The goal of the engagement workshops is to learn more from Tribal Citizens and community members about their ties to the former hospital and gather the community’s input regarding the planning and design of a memorial for the Sioux San Hospital site.
The schedule for the workshops is as follows:
1. Workshop I: Thursday, February 20, 2025
2. Workshop II: Wednesday, March 12, 2025
3. Virtual Workshop I: Wednesday, March 26, 2025
4. Workshop III: Saturday, April 5, 2025
5. Workshop IV: Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Bodwé Group has worked on various projects in the Rapid City area, including the design of the new Oyate Health Center as well as NHPA Section 106 Mitigation Activities that worked to collect and preserve the history of the campus. The team is eager to engage community members in a series of interactive activities and listening sessions designed to bring forward a wide range of ideas from workshop participants, codify community input in a summary report, and create conceptual drawings that accurately reflect the community’s vision for how best to remember Sioux San.
Interested individuals may visit https://www.bodwegroup.com/news/sioux-san-memorial-planning-community-engagement-project for more information about this project.
ABOUT BODWÉ PROFESSIONAL SERVICES GROUP
Bodwé is the Professional Services Group of Mno-Bmadsen, the non-gaming investment enterprise and a wholly owned instrumentality of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi. Blue Star Integrative Studio and Seven Generations Architecture + Engineering (7GAE) are part of the Bodwé family of companies and are collaborating to support the work for the Sioux San Memorial Project.
