Family donates historical Lakota tapes to Oglala Lakota College

Hundreds of recordings made of drum groups, reservation fairs, and even Christmas songs on tape

By Heidi Bell Gease, Journal staff | Thursday, August 30, 2007

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RAPID CITY -- Thanks to a gift from a local family, Lakota students at Oglala Lakota College can now hear their ancestors speak.

The late Jim Emery spent 25 years recording Lakota songs, powwows and conversations with people such as Black Elk, spiritual leader Frank Fools Crow and Dewey Beard, the last survivor of both the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Wounded Knee Massacre.

Emery traveled throughout the country recording and preserving Lakota language and history. He sometimes carried a generator in his car so he could power his tape recorder in remote areas without electricity.

Now, Emery's family has donated a treasure trove of about 300 audiotapes -- all transferred to CDs -- to Oglala Lakota College. Emery's sons, Jim Emery and Chuck Emery, and grandsons, David Emery and Randy Emery, made the presentation Wednesday.

"Basically, it's historic preservation," Randy Emery said. "These are (our) ancestors talking. ... Nothing's going to make you want to speak the language like hearing your grandfather speak it."

"The very identify of the Lakota people revolves around the language, the culture and the Lakota history," David Emery agreed.

The late Jim Emery was raised on Rosebud Indian Reservation by his grandfather, who was white, and his grandmother, Walks Alone, who was at Little Big Horn and Wounded Knee. Relatives said Emery's grandfather spoke to his grandmother in English and she answered in Lakota. "He grew up without realizing he was bilingual," said Emery's son Jim.

After attending Haskell Indian School in Lawrence, Kan., from 1925 to 1927, Emery and his wife, Edith, returned to the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. Randy said his grandfather noticed that the Lakota language had changed in the short time he was gone. Words had been shortened and clipped. Not wanting the old language to vanish, Emery began recording it.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Emery made hundreds of recordings, capturing drum groups, reservation fairs and even Christmas songs on tape. David Emery said the Lakota Flag Song, heard before literally every powwow and Native American sporting event, was first recorded in his grandpa's basement in Rapid City. Other tapes preserved songs that are no longer sung.

"I think he did a remarkable job," Chuck Emery said of his father.

Emery started out using Edison cylinders, which are wax. Some of the earliest recordings were lost when the cylinders melted. The rest of the recordings, captured on reel-to-reel tape, include stories shared by Paul Apple, Ellis Chips, Charlie Red Cloud, Jessie and Wallace Little Finger and others.

"These are some of the greatest Lakota orators and singers," Oglala Lakota College president Tom Shortbull said. "I am extremely honored to accept these audio tapes on behalf of Oglala Lakota College so that we may do our part to keep alive the words and the songs of those who passed on before us."

The Emery family is just as happy to see the tapes find a home at OLC, where people will use them. "That's what he recorded them for," David Emery said.

The audiotapes will be kept in the archives at the school's Piya Wiconi campus at Kyle. They will be available to students and to the public.

Copies were also given to Crazy Horse Memorial, Jim Emery said.

In addition to his archiving work, the late Jim Emery hosted two radio shows, Moccasin Time and Oyate, which aired throughout South Dakota. He also taught Lakota language at Sinte Gleska College and the University of South Dakota. He died teaching in a USD classroom in 1977.

Emery was also a long-time employee of Black Hills Power & Light. Emery's son Jim, a former state senator from Custer, is a retired district manager for Black Hills Power. David Emery is chairman, president and chief executive officer of Black Hills Corp., a company that grew out of Black Hills Power.

Contact Heidi Bell Gease at 394-8419 or heidi.bell@rapidcityjournal.com