The Sioux Valley Dakota Nation Governance (SVDN) is a community of 2,500 inhabitants located 50km west of Brandon, Manitoba and 10km north of the Trans-Canada Highway. Governed by a tribal Chief and five Councillors, the SVDN are currently negotiating and implementing a “Self-Government Agreement” which will remove themselves from the authority of the Canadian Government. And once agreed, it will allow the SVDN to “take control of its governing structure.”

With on-going negotiations set to continue for some time, the SVDN turned their attention towards their website. They felt an improved look and feel would help better communicate who the SVDN is, as well as be a hub to provide regular news updates for the community. And so, the SVDN came a-calling and asked us to create a brand new responsive website for them.

As with the majority of these projects I will always encourage you to visit the website to get a true sense of the work our team performed. However, just to give you a taste, here are some of the features of the new Sioux Valley Dakota Nation Governance website:

• Bilingual capability – website visitors can select to read the website content in English or Dakota.
• Text resizing – as the new website follows current usability and accessibility guidelines, website users can increase or decrease the size of the font.
• Councillor login – SVDN Councillors have the ability to login to the website and have access to member/Councillor-only information.
• Internal search engine – to let their users easily search for information using specific keywords.
• Newsletter sign-up – for those website users who are interested in staying up-to-date with the SVDN and their progress for self-governance, they can register for newsletters.

Along with the features, as mentioned above, the new SVDN website has been designed responsive. And if you’re unfamiliar with the term “responsive design“, then it’s the ability for the website to automatically re-size itself according to the device that it is being viewed on. As in the image for this article. See how the website reacts differently to the Mac, iPad, and iPhone? Well that, ladies and gentlemen, is responsive design.

And there you go readers. That’s the story of our latest responsive web design for the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation Governance. So, do you like what you see? If so, leave us a comment in the box below!