There is much to be learned about galaxy formation and evolution from
our own Milky Way halo and the dwarf galaxies around it. Resolved
stellar spectroscopy presents us with `archaeological` evidence about
the chemical enrichment of the interstellar medium back to the
earliest times. In this talk I will discuss several insights in the
(chemical) evolution of the dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way from
both modeling and observational perspectives. I will show that the
classical dwarf galaxies are not so devoid of extremely
low-metallicity stars as was previously thought and discuss how well
we can represent the dwarf satellite system by semi-analytical
prescriptions in fully cosmological simulations.