Sisseton Wahpeton College is part of a long history of education that has gone through many phases and changes since first contact with Europeans. Before the United States of America was a nation, the Sisseton and Wahpeton Bands knew and practiced applied sciences and lifelong learning. Their knowledge of the natural sciences astounded Europeans who could not accept them as more than primitive savages.

The Sisseton and Wahpeton have survived mission schools, boarding schools, and hundreds of educational laws and policies, and even being banned from their homeland to a reservation. Here in the northeastern corner of the state of South Dakota, the remnants of the two bands were allowed to retain a small triangular shaped piece of land now known as the Lake Traverse Reservation.

Here the elders of the tribe visualized a time when their own people would take control of the education of its youth.