Dickinson to celebrate heritage with Northern Plains Ethnic Festival

Aug. 7—DICKINSON — Locals will celebrate their ethnic heritage later this month at the Northern Plains Ethnic Festival on Saturday, Aug. 19, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Prairie Outpost Park. Admission is free. There will be live music, dancing, and plenty of food for sale. Ethnicities represented will include the German-Russians, Ukrainians, Scandinavians, Czechs, and Mexicans.

Bob Furnham, Director of the Dickinson Museum Center, explained why this event means so much to many in the community.

"The importance lies in a couple of areas. Part of it is the ethnic groups, celebrations of and continued recognition of their heritage, and making the younger generation aware of that," Furnham said. "The food, that attracts so many people. Every year, every group sells out of everything they bring. It's a testament to how popular the cuisine is and how curious people are."

Elaine Dvorak is president of the Northern Plains Ethnic Festival Committee and Dickinson's Czech cultural club. She said the festival is a tradition that's been going on since 1983.

"We're all trying to be rich in our cultures and keep it up," Dvorak said. "It's just nice when we bake. We all get together. Everybody visits and shares recipes. It's just a fun thing to do to keep up your heritage... You don't want it to go away."

Norm Dukhart is president of the German-Russian cultural club in Dickinson and secretary of the festival committee. He said his group will be selling sausage on a stick and farmer hats, which are deep-fried buns. He's also good friends with members of the Ukrainian Cultural Institute and often helps them make their cheese buttons, also known as perogies.

"For farmer's hats you roll the dough in sugar and cinnamon. They go really well with borscht and vegetable soup," Dukhart said. "Elaine and I grew up on farms in the Manning area just a little ways apart, so we've known each other all our lives."

He explained that the Czechs and German-Russians who settled in this area were primarily Roman Catholic, the Norwegians were Lutheran and the Ukrainians were

Ukrainian Catholic.

Dickinson currently has four Catholic parishes. The first was St. Patrick's, established in 1885.

"The Irish people came in with the railroad and started Saint Pat's but they didn't stay long. Then the Germans were going there and they asked Bishop Shanley who was in Fargo overseeing the whole Diocese of North Dakota to send them a priest who could speak German so they could understand him and that's how Saint Joe's began in 1902," Dukhart said. "Then from Saint Joe's came Saint Wenceslaus, a Bohemian or Czechloslovachian parish. They first met in Saint Joe's basement and then built their own church."

The term German-Russian generally refers to people who immigrated to southwest Russia and modern-day Ukraine in the late 1700s and early 1800s after the Russian government offered land incentives to Germans who settled. Many Germans were also motivated to leave due to poor potato crops and because young men faced conscription into the French military during the Napoleonic Wars. Dukhart said that approximately 66,000 Germans were drafted for Napoleon's infamously futile invasion of Russia, and only 1,600 survived. Approximately 60 years later Czar Alexander III implemented Russification policies conscripting them to military service and discouraging them from using German in their schools, prompting many to leave for the Americas.

Dukhart said his grandparents were German-Russians who came to the area in 1901 from what is now Ukraine. He said although they didn't talk much about their homeland, they were passionate about their heritage.

"That was not a topic that they would talk about too much... One big thing is the food that they would make. And of course, the faith that they practiced and just the tradition of working hard to get things done. They were farmers and ranchers," he said.

He noted they farmed a diverse array of crops, including oats, barley, flax, and corn.

Dukhart said he's also talked to some friendly local immigrants from West Africa but hasn't been able to get them on board for the festival.