News & Views of Phillips Since 1976
Thursday December 18th 2025
Engagement with Organizations
Under the leadership of Hope Community, the BYI organizational team implemented a plan to research the interests and needs of community organizations in the Backyard area.
Hope Community held one to one interviews and listening circles with 34 organizational leaders representing 31 organizations to provide an update about the BYI and hear their issues. Several key themes emerged:
- Support for the BYI definition of health and its focus on social connectedness as an important strategy to improve health.
- Organizations feel “silo- d” and isolated as immediate demands and inadequate funding make it difficult to take on new projects.
- Organizations are overwhelmingly interested in continuing to be involved in the work of the BYI if it is productive and action-focused.
In response to resident”'s request for better understanding of available resources from organizations, the first ever comprehensive inventory of non-profits in the Backyard was completed. The inventory yielded a list of 202 nonprofits within the geographic Backyard and upon further analysis; there is now a database of 125 active organizations in the area that are relevant to improving health. CHAT members and other residents in the Backyard will be able to use the inventory to identify and pursue organizations that may be able to support their work.… Read the rest “Engagement with Organizations”
MOVING TOWARDS FORGIVENESS: Reflections by a Dakota Language CHAT member upon seeing the documentary “Dakota 38”
As a part of the ”˜Dakota CHAT, we were inclined to show our fellow CHAT members a piece of history that no longer is disaOur showing was very powerful as well as emotional for all that were present for the showing of the documentary Dakota “38” plus 2. I especially want to give thanks to the CHAT members who were present to see a piece of history long over due in our daily discussions involving Indigenous peoples everywhere.
Our event became an intro into a realm of forgiveness! The depiction in the movie was intense as well as moving as we seen euro-centric humans as well as indigenous humans come together in a scene not exactly familiar! Tears were undeniable, a new appreciation began to fill the room as we “all” understood the message at hand and that was ultimately “love”. Sharing it, exploring it, and accepting it. All of this brought to us by a beautiful man with a vision, Mr. Miller.
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Dakota Language CHAT
The Dakota Language Revitalization CHAT continues to full fill its commitment to the well being of the Dakota peoples through spiritual, cultural, language and educational ways of life that are inherit to the Dakota nation.
At the beginning of the 20th century, there were more than seven thousand speakers of the Dakota language located in over 24 different reservations, reserves, homestead settlements in Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada. All of these speakers who called their homeland Mnisota ”shining lakes” and what is now called by settler society as the state of Minnesota, were all descendants of the original Dakota”'s who inhabited this area since time immemorial. The tragic consequences of the Dakota wars of 1862 lead to the Diaspora of the Dakota nation from their original homeland.
Subsequent to the events of 1862 and the creation of the reservation system; the governments of Canada and the United States in-acted policies and laws to, at times, forcibly remove Dakota children from their homes to federal and church run schools called: residential schools (Canada) or boarding schools (U.S.), were the use of the Dakota language was forbidden by strict punishment and even death. By the 1950”'s three generations of Dakota peoples had grown up the boarding and residential school system.… Read the rest “Dakota Language CHAT”
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