College of Arts & Sciences American Indian Studies

Oral History Center

Devoted to Documenting History

Through the continued collection of regional oral histories, the South Dakota Oral History Center (SDOHC) will enrich the understanding of events, thoughts and cultural practices from the region's past and ever-changing present. We understand that with the gift of an interview comes great responsibility, including the preservation, conservation and access to those interviews for future generations. We are devoted to protecting and maintaining the integrity of words from the past for the people of South Dakota, the Northern Plains region and the world.

Collections

Our archives contain more than 5,400 recorded interviews and is a combination of two distinct collections: the American Indian Research Project (AIRP) and the South Dakota Oral History Project (SDOHP).

  • As one of the six original university oral history projects funded by the Doris Duke Foundation, each project's primary goal was to collect the history of American Indian people from their perspective.
  • The AIRP contains over 2,200 taped interviews, 70 percent of which were gathered in the field between 1967 and 1973.
  • In 1970, the South Dakota State Legislature allocated funds to establish the SDOHP. For the SDOHP, interviews were recorded in every county in South Dakota, specifically with South Dakotans who recalled events before and around 1900. Currently this collection contains 3,178 interviews.

The combined AIRP and SDOHP collections illustrate a holistic view of the Indian and non-Indian history of South Dakota and the Northern Plains region, specifically from the 1860s to the present. The AIRP contains the interviews of the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota languages, music, lifeways and spirituality, along with traditional and contemporary social, political, and economical philosophies.

Access

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SDOHC logo The SDOHC is devoted to documenting the history of the Northern Plains region and the care of previously collected interviews.