In the 1950s the Rosebud's schools had adopted the state's standards, which had nothing to say about the Lakota language or Sicangu history. Stanley Red Bird and other tribal leaders set out to change that, and in 1970 the Rosebud Sioux Tribe chartered its own college at Mission, named for Spotted Tail. Its first classes met on February 3, 1971. Lionel Bordeaux, a Sicangu educator who came home for it, led the school as president for more than four decades, and Albert White Hat taught the Lakota language there for years and helped shape how Lakota is written and taught.
It is now a university, part of the movement of tribal colleges that nations across the plains built in the same years, with Lakota Studies at its center. Its main campus at Antelope Lake east of Mission is built in forms drawn from Lakota tradition, and the university keeps its own bison herd, a base for research on the animals, the ceremonies that go with them and the economy they once sustained.
The Sicangu Heritage Center on campus holds the official archives of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. Since 1988 the university has organized the Northern Plains Indian Art Market, which brings Lakota, Dakota, Nakota and other Plains artists to buyers from across the country.
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