South Dakota Oral History Center
OfficeThe South Dakota Oral History Center collects and preserves voices of the people of the Northern Plains through a collection of more than 5500 interviews.
Contact Us
414 E. Clark St.
Vermillion SD 57069
Monday - Friday
9 - 5 p.m.
Preserving the voices of the Northern Plains
The USD Oral History Center is home to a collection of more than 5500 interviews preserving indigenous memories and experiences from the 1890s to the present. Digitized, catalogued and available to researchers and historians, it's a vital and valuable record of the historical, social and cultural legacy of the state.The Collections
With its first 1,100 recordings funded by a grant from Doris Duke in 1966, this collection has grown to contain approximately 1,800 recordings pertaining to Native American history, especially that of the northern Great Plains. More than fifty tribal nations are represented in the AIRP. USD gathered the majority of these oral history recordings in the 1960s and 1970s through the work of Joseph Harper Cash and Herbert T. Hoover, both longtime professors at the University of South Dakota. The gathering of recordings for the AIRP was not discontinued at the end of the grant, but has continued into the twenty-first century, ensuring the continued growth and usage of this important collection.
With more than 3200 recordings, this large collection covers a wide range of topics. The project's original charge was to interview people from every county in South Dakota, which led to over 2,450 taped interviews collected between 1970 and 1977.
Faculty & Staff
