South Dakota
The Sylvia Bacon Scholarship Fund
For Native women of South Dakota, and for the women who raise them.
How a young woman arrives here
There is no application form.
A young woman does not find this fund on her own. An elder or an auntie who already knows her brings her forward.
That is the only way in, and it is deliberate. The people who can say what a young woman carries are the people who have watched her carry it.
What this fund holds up
Two things, and the second is the point.
We fund scholarships for young Native women. We also fund the grassroots women’s groups doing the work: teaching Lakota and Dakota, putting ceremony into practice.
That work is not separate from the scholarships. It is what strengthens the young women in the first place.
The women’s groups
The ones already doing it.
Each group is named here in its own words, with a link to its own site where it has one.
Not yet recorded.No group appears on this page until it has been asked and has said yes. Language and ceremony work is not ours to publish on anyone’s behalf.
If you are the auntie, or the elder
What to have in hand.
A letter of application, written for her. These are what it should speak to:
- Tribally enrolled, or a lineal descendant
- Demonstrated involvement in her community
- A letter on her commitment to community, including how this will affect it
- Financial need
- A grade point average of 2.5 or higher, if she is already enrolled
- A letter of support from a community leader or an organization that knows her
Not yet recorded.The award amount, how many are given each year, when to send a letter, and who decides.
And then
She turns around.
A young woman this fund supports comes back to mentor other young women in her own community.
That is not a condition attached to the money. It is the shape of the thing. The circle closes rather than ends.
Sylvia Bacon
Whose name this carries.
Sylvia Bacon was born in Watertown, South Dakota, in 1931, and graduated from Watertown High School in 1949. She went on to Vassar, the London School of Economics, and Harvard Law. She became the highest-ranking woman in the United States Attorney’s office, was appointed to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in 1970, and was twice considered for the Supreme Court at a time when no woman had ever sat on it. She died in 2023, at 91.
Not yet recorded.How this fund came to carry her name, who founded it, and when.
Reaching us
There is no form. There is a person.
If you are an elder or an auntie with a young woman in mind, this is where you start.
Not yet recorded.Who to write to, and how to reach her. Until this is filled in there is no way into this fund from this page, which makes it the most urgent thing on it.