Indigenizing HeSapa’s Commercial Airwaves

The specific problem we are working to solve is in the realm of audience (aka customer base).

On an immediate and local scale, KIPI Radio’s capacity to continue and expand our work depends on our ability to reach a much broader listening public. This has a two-fold impact: 1) more listeners will access our decolonized programming, 2) a broader customer base will attract more advertising sales that will in turn support more and better decolonized programming.

On a national and historical scale, we identify the problem to be reversing the impact of colonization: U.S. policies of colonization have been too successful on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. To combat this ongoing colonization, KIPI Radio produces programming designed to reclaim our voices, our history, and our self-determination.

Furthermore, we aim to dislodge the economic disparity as well as the ongoing entrenched and hostile racial disparities in western South Dakota, and in Rapid City, South Dakota, specifically. This goal resonates with combating the overall racial disparities in the United States of America. The erasure of Indigenous people in the collective has had profound effects on the planet. The act of placemaking and peacemaking can only be done by us in relationship to this realm, and on this land.  

As Lakota people we are not afraid to have honest conversations about difficult things in a way toward right relationships. We have been committed thus far in that respect waiting on recognition and understanding that seems to be a bit upon us now. Many understand the grave importance of the abundant resources that exist in this time and place, and the possibility that they be directed toward letting us have our own voice to commodify for tribal profit.

Expanding KIPI’s listening area is fundamentally a part of our mission to sustain ourselves and provide jobs and revenue for the tribe. Having a tribal radio station these last 5 years has had an immeasurable impact on our community by increasing access to culturally appropriate news and entertainment and becoming a hub for community information and alerts. In isolated areas across the northern great plains, radio has always been a great connector keeping our communities informed, entertained, and aware of civil alerts and severe weather. Bringing Lakota media to western South Dakota is vital to keeping a thriving vibrant community that welcomes and retains community.

KIPI Radio’s solution is to build a station in Rapid City and amplify our programming budget. This will quadruple our customer base. It will allow us to have the potential to support ourselves beyond the reach of tribal political whim. It will allow us to employ more people in an empowerment zone.  

It will bring a tribal voice to the profitable commercial airwaves in Rapid City, South Dakota.  The entrenched racial animosity in the Black Hills is ongoing. And yet, still, the Black Hills is an incredibly profitable tourist market. 

The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe owns land in the Rapid City area, and building a tower and transmitting station would allow us to expand our listener base in general, and specifically increase our advertising potential, and critically respond to a wider need of tribal broadcast programming as a commercial radio station. 

KIPI Radio is a 5-year-old commercial radio station owned and operated by the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. At a time when radio broadcasters from across the country are choosing to contract programming and stream radio produced outside of the region, KIPI Radio emerged to meet a critical need for diversity of voices over the airwaves in western South Dakota. KIPI Radio has three state of the art High Definition (HD) broadcast studios. RCS software, and its compatible computer equipment enables us to program in advance, and broadcast over our two HD channels and subchannels. 

Lakota culture-based broadcasting, and with it, its understandings of living in relationship to its listeners and to each other has been absent from the radio waves. KIPI radio makes it its mission to fill that gap. 

 KIPI is proud of the news and programming we produce. We’ve found a comfortable cultural variety with everything from classic country to HIP HOP and shows like the Wanagi Night Show, the Kiktapo Morning show and KIPI’s Native American focused headline news from across the globe that highlight Lakota cultural values. 

Our current listening area is only 12,000 people. KIPI Radio is in western South Dakota: Dewey, Ziebach, and Corson counties whose per capita incomes are near the lowest in the country. Ziebach currently the 4th poorest county in the nation. Agriculture is the main source of income in those counties. And much of that income is to non-indian settlers.

The Urban Indian Population of Rapid City is estimated to be 20% but many tribal folks actively avoid census counts, while poverty and other factors make the community incredibly transient. 

The radio technology we would use to solve this challenge is tried and true; while the translators, the transmitters, and software have truly transformed the radio industry. KIPI radio is one of a handful of regional radio stations that is place-based. Many of our competitors contract programming from out of state without any staff at all, while we produce original programming with local staff and community-based. We also reach across the globe via internet streams, giving our station a global reach unimaginable to the radio industry of old.  

If we Lakota have any expertise in anything, it’s place, and specifically He Sapa. The radio technology and resources we’re asking for will help to rectify a wrong still ongoing with no end in sight. Colonial displacement is one of the most obvious mistakes that the modern era owns. This solution could help to mend some of the past mistakes and point the populace in a better direction together.  

We see KIPI Radio as an olive branch; a perspective, and a learning tool for ourselves, and our neighbors. Understanding each other and the land in relationship to one another is tantamount to the mission KIPI radio has to be a true reflection of our community. That expression of creative wholistic indigenous values is absent from mainstream culture to its detriment.

This solution will directly impact the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and the Urban Indian population in Rapid City, South Dakota in a multitude of ways. We offer quality high-paying creative employment and culturally appropriate indigenous-created programming over the HD airwaves, on Social Media, and on YouTube. 

KIPI is owned and operated by the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and under the Cheyenne River Economic Development Corporation (CREDCO) led by J.D. Williams. J.D. was at the helm of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Telephone Authority for over 40 years. CRSTTA is the oldest American Indian Owned telephone authority in the country.  

KIPI Radio’s station manager is Chas Jewett. Chas is a lifelong resident of South Dakota minus a couple short stints in Minnesota and Washington, DC. She has been an organizer who has spent her career building relationships between cultures in South Dakota. She spent nearly 20 years in the Black Hills area. Since taking the helm, KIPI has prioritized producing quality and  culturally appropriate news and programming, long term sustainability, workforce investment, and development.  

Seth Picotte is the Executive Producer at KIPI and has been with KIPI radio since the very beginning in one capacity or another. Seth has an intimate working knowledge of all the state-of-the-art equipment that KIPI radio has. 

Carl Petersen is the Assistant Station Manager and serves as KIPI’s technologist. Since coming on board Carl has brought our website in-house and has helped develop our KIPI Radio App. Carl is an award-winning game developer and an excellent journalist who has a keen understanding of radio technology. 

Troy Eagle Chasing “SiouxperNatural” is a lead content director and an award winning musical producer.

Colette Keith has a 30 year career in broadcast journalism after being the youngest Administrative Officer for the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.  

Our leadership is a direct reflection of our community. We all grew up in the area, left to receive our degrees and returned home to be of service to our tribe and communities. Our worldviews have been impacted by travel, by ceremony, by education, and experience. We all come from different tiospayes (extended families), we have lived experiences as farmers and ranchers, as performers, as artists, as athletes, as activists, as organizers. We can give accurate reflections of grassroots tribal perspectives, because we have them. We can tell stories that can’t be told from a colonial lens. We can share ideas and understandings that haven’t ever been mainstreamed—but definitely should be.

With the support of the Solve grant, KIPI Radio will bring a tribal voice to the profitable commercial airwaves in Rapid City, South Dakota. Reaching Rapid City and the Black Hills will help us to tap a profitable tourist industry. Waves of commerce followed General Custer illegally into lands we still hold legally under the Treaty of 1868.  After everyone stole our gold, the banker Rushmore paid for some stone faces to be carved and other gimmicks came after that continue to generate trillions of dollars for non-Indian profiteers whilst we lead the poorest counties contest decade after decade.

Chas Jewett's has deep roots in both communities: Eagle Butte and Rapid City. When she began to have memory there was always the kitchen tables and the tribal politics discussions. When she was 8 years old she did her very first political act by distributing fliers for her Aunt Iyonne's run for chair person in 1980. To say that a part of her identity is intertwined with her tribe would be an understatement. She is humbled at the opportunity her boss and her tribe have given her and is committed to KIPI radio's success, and proud of the honor of working on such a worthwhile endeavor. 

The simplicity of this solution is the innovation. Too often we try to throw together grand technological solutions to problems that existed before technology. The erasure of Indigenous identity didn't happen because of innovation or adaptation it happened because of federal policy. Upending generations of genocide can't happen with an app--but it could maybe happen after a thought provoking KIPI Radio news story--or a poignant recollection from a DJ about a struggle overcoming poverty or some other moment of shared experience or recollection. Shared understandings only come from shared experiences, strength and hope. Change happens at the speed of trust; and broken promises add up. Radio technology has the opportunity to put an indigenous perspective in places we're not expected to be or even welcome to be, but fear of the unknown has continued willfully, purposefully even now that curriculum being taught by the state of South Dakota is going to exclude the Religious Freedom Act history. It was in Station Manager Chas Jewett's lifetime, who was six years old before she could practice her religion. The simple availability of tribal media in the Black Hills could counter the current efforts to reinforce racialized colonial standards.

For the next year KIPI radio intends to continue providing Lakota-centered radio programming. We intend to build the Wicozani Check In, our tribal health focused programming, and debut our Return to First Medicines Docuseries. We are also working on developing our sports coverage, and intend to be the exclusive radio broadcaster of the Indian National Finals Rodeo. 

In 5 years, KIPI Radio would love to be able to sustain itself without tribal resources to give it the freedom to report without fear of political retribution. We also are seeking funding for a solar array and battery bank to help with high rural electricity costs for the tower. 

We plan to achieve our goals through every available resource and opportunity we come across. This grant is an opportunity, we've completed three other grants in the past month and intend to continue to expand our programming sponsorships and news programming collaborations. 

We measure our success at KIPI Radio in a multitude of ways. A listener survey, an informal poll at the website, soliciting comments and suggestions online and over the air. Our phone is ringing all week long with public service announcements, school closures, hospital hours, job ads and other critical information. In the course of our five short years in existence we have become a fundamental part of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe's communication structure, critical during the COVID 19 lockdown. KIPI Radio formally is answerable to the full CRST Tribal council, additionally, we report to the Cheyenne River Economic Development Corportation Board of Directors.

A story told by our station manager about her father sums it up. One time a group of college students came from the University of Michigan to save the indians for a week with their white van and my cousin Julie from the Cheyenne River Youth Project asked if they could come to Jewett Creek. He invited them down we set outside to visit. He told one of us to grab the charcoal lighter fluid so the semi damp wood would catch quick--and one of the cheeky young men asked if that was an ancient indian trick. Everyone laughed but Dad and then none of us did, and then he said, of course it is, we adapt.  

Indigenous people still exist right beside the opulence because we still tell the stories about the old ways, and we still live by them as much as we can. But when we're forced to, we adapt.

The core technology at the heart of this application is storytelling. We want to be able to tell the story of our people through commercial radio. Already we live in an openly hostile racialized environment and non-indians know very little quantifiable facts about us, their neighbors. Radio technology offers us the opportunity to be guided along through a cultural experience. But, like a horse to water, we can't make non-indians drink from the well of cultural and place-based knowledge, but we can continue to make the knowledge available. 

The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Radio Corporation d.b.a. KIPI Radio is a Tribal Government Authority Incorporated by the Laws of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and wholly owned by the Tribal Government it has the Federal Tax Status of a Tribal Government Authority under 26 U.S.C. § 7871

KIPI Radio is queer led, and dedicated to being a workplace that promotes self-development and commitment to ceremonial cultural practices. Having a positive cultural understanding is a bar that must be met here at KIPI Radio. Our narratives are upending the dominant narrative and focusing on positive life affirming messages, joyful stories of resilience and grit that have kept us in relationship with each other. 

KIPI Radio provides and produces different things for different audiences. 

One primary goal is To operate a radio broadcasting station on behalf or the Tribe for the benefit of the members of the tribe and the residents of the Reservation. 

To broadcast live proceedings of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Government, including the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Council. 
 
To educate and inform the members of the Tribe and residents of the listening area on governmental, educational and community affairs and events, and to promote community involvement in such affairs and events. 

To broadcast quality radio programing including educational programing and programing on traditional Lakota music, culture, values and history. 

To broadcast public service announcements including to PSAs for emergencies, weather, schools closures and other community events. 

To provide jobs, create economic activity, and generate revenue to allow these activities and other essential government services. 

To perform any and all lawful activities which may be necessary, useful, or incidental to the furtherance or accomplishment of the foregoing purposes. 

To get sponsorships for events, news programs, call-in shows and documentaries. 

The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe has underwritten us for the past few years and intend to do so until we can sustain ourselves. We have active grant writing programs, and sell sponsorships for sports and other events. 

In our first year of developing sustaining partnerships with organizations in the area KIPI Radio has been incredibly successful--over 20 organizations or businesses have signed yearly contracts with us. The largest with CRST Tribal Health is for $15,000.  KIPI Radio intends to focus attention on developing collaborative relationships with local organizations, and government entities.