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South Dakota Oral History Center
The Institute of American Indian Studies administers one of the largest oral history collections of its kind in the United States. The South Dakota Oral History Center's archives contain over 5,200 recorded interviews.
The Center is a combination of two distinct collections; the American Indian Research Project and the South Dakota Oral History Project.
Collections
The American Indian Research Project (AIRP) contains over 1,900 taped interviews, 70 percent of which were gathered in the field between 1967 and 1973. One of 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.
In 1970, the South Dakota State Legislature allocated funds to establish the South Dakota Oral History Project (SDOHP). For the SDOHP, interviews were recorded in every county in South Dakota, specifically with South Dakotans who recalled events before and around 1900. Interviewers in the field amassed a collection of over 2,450 taped interviews between 1970 and 1977. Currently this collection contains 3,025 interviews.
 This icon indicates there is a sound to augment the current oral history, in most cases the voice of the subject of the oral history. You will need a sound card installed on your computer to be able to hear the sound. Click on the icon to hear the sound.
Scope of the Collections
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 through the late 1940s. From the AIRP, Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota language, music, lifeways, and spirituality are preserved, along with traditional and contemporary social, political, and economical philosophies. Transitions in education, economic development, Indian/White relations, and tribal elf-government, particularly within the period of the Howard-Wheeler Act of the 1930s, dominate the collection.
From the SDOHP, the living conditions of European immigrants homesteading in the Dakotas is preserved, along with the histories of the communities they established. Indian/White relations, cowboy life,agricultural transactions from 1880 through the 1900s, World War I, women's suffrage, and life during the depression of the 1930s dominate the holdings of this collection.
How to obtain AIRP/SDOHP Abstracts and Subject Indexes
Accessibility to Transcripts and Tapes of the SDOHC
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