Bismarck-Mandan, North Dakota in June, 2024
The Association of Cooperative Educators was born in the Province of Saskatchewan. Canadian farmers formed cooperatives to sell their grain, to provide money to put in their crops, and to purchase inputs like fuel, seed, fertilizer, and farm implements. Their neighbors to the South in the State of North Dakota in the United States were doing the same thing. In North Dakota, cooperation became a survival instinct for farmers and isolated communities and the institutions those activists created will welcome participants to the 2024 ACE Cooperative Institute June 24-27 in Bismarck and Mandan, North Dakota.
The institute will be held on the beautiful campus of the North Dakota Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives in Mandan, North Dakota. In the 1930s and 1940s farm families banded together, and with help of financing from the United States Government, built out a system of generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity to farms that investor-owned companies would not serve. Cooperation is so deeply imbedded in the Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives they have inscribed the walls of their office complex with the International Cooperative Alliances values.
When you come to Mandan in June you will be coming to the heart of the world. The Mandan Tribe on the Missouri River were world class traders. When the expedition chartered by President Jefferson reached what became Fort Mandan near the present city of Washburn in 1804, there were as many people living with in 30 miles of that point as lived in the Nations Capital, Washington DC. You will see and experience the living history of cooperation, conflict, and the majestic Missouri River, the superhighway that tied it all together. Institute presenters and participants alike will be teachers and learners discovering anew the power of human cooperation. Welcome to Bismarck and Mandan in 2024.
