KILI Radio
Tom Casey, Station Manager
PO Box 150
Porcupine, S.D. 57772
(605) 867-5002

In the aftermath of the demonstrations at Wounded Knee in 1973, a group of American Indian Movement leaders came together to consider a project that would make an ongoing contribution. It didn't take them long, Tom Casey recalls, to recognize that there was a total vacuum of on-reservation media under Lakota control.

The result, KILI Radio, the Voice of the Lakota Nation, was some time coming. It took several years of planning and more of fund-raising, with money coming from sources as diverse as Department of Commerce public-telecommunications grants for the transmitter, and "scrounged" concrete blocks and volunteer labor to build KILI's tiny studio high on a bluff above the town of Porcupine, just a few miles north of Wounded Knee.

KILI finally went on the air in February 1983, and it became an instant unifying force for the Lakota community. Its signal, now up to 100,000 watts, blankets the widespread Pine Ridge Reservation and beyond; and its programming (although National Public Radio satellite transmissions are available to it) are almost entirely Lakota-oriented. Announcements are bilingual in English and Lakota, and the station's small but busy staff covers community events from Tribal Council meetings to pow-wows, along with heavy programming of American Indian music from traditional to modern. KILI also makes a strong commitment to airing literally hundreds of public-service announcements weekly for reservation events and institutions.

A non-profit, educational station, KILI's staff of seven (all Lakota except for Casey, a former communications professor at Oglala Lakota college) operates on a $300,000 annual budget.

"It's been a real struggle," says Casey, who has been station manager for three years. "But we think the station has had an impact . . . a very important impact."

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