Sinte Gleska University, the oldest tribal university in the Americas, was founded thirty-five years ago in Rosebud, South Dakota. RoTo planned an entirely new campus on a prairie adjacent to a lake and built three buildings. The campus planning, siting and design were influenced by spatial and formal characteristics of the Lakota universal model and Lakota numerology. Our challenge was to find a contemporary form for traditional values and practices. We saw the Campus as an extension of the University’s Lakota studies curriculum.

From the tribal elders, we learned how they locate their camps, the basis for arranging their tipis, the size and configuration of the encampment and the alignment of built structures with natural ones. Lines of movement and places of rest on earth are reflected in the sky, in an ever-changing, rhythmic and recurring cycle. Lakota myths and legends record the significance of the relationship of earth and sky, in which the horizon is the zone of human occupation. Their stories embody concepts of mirroring, scaling, and nesting, all of which incorporate principles of order and systems of relationships between all things in the universe. All sizes and scales, physical, aesthetic and spiritual aspects are inextricably linked.

We developed a hierarchy for siting decisions and diagrams of the campus based upon the number of “connections” or “correspondences” that occurred in a reading of the natural landscape through the Lakota lens. The campus plan integrates the manmade and natural site conditions dictated by our reading of traditional Lakota spatial systems. We developed relational and multi-scaled ordering systems defined as natural (experience-based), abstract (intellectually-based), and mythological (spiritually-based).