The Indians for Indians radio show, often referred to as the Indians for Indians Hour, was broadcast from the University of Oklahoma (OU) campus from 1941 through the mid-1970s. Don Whistler, an OU alumnus and a local business owner in Norman, created the show and hosted it for its first ten years. He also happened to be the principal chief of the Sac and Fox tribe during those years, an important point when considering his advocacy during broadcasts for Native rights. Whistler was explicit that the show was by Indians, for Indians, so there was no need for participants to feel that they were performing for a non-Native audience. Along with a sense of ownership, this freedom of expression resulted in a diversity of music and spoken content, in large part reflecting the diversity of Native American tribes in Oklahoma.

Thirty-nine tribes are headquartered in Oklahoma (see Oklahoma Tribal Statistical Area map). During the nineteenth century, the federal government forcibly relocated most of these tribes to Indian Territory from wide-flung regions of the United States, including the southeast, the northern and central plains, the northeast, and the southwest. Because of this, tribal nations in Oklahoma represent an array of cultural practices and linguistic families. At least twenty of these tribes are represented on the radio show, a remarkable feat given that participants often had to travel considerable distances. Whistler’s wide acquaintance with Natives across the state and genuine rapport with his guests helped build the show into a friendly intertribal gathering place over the airwaves.

Indians for Indians was broadcast over WNAD, the university’s AM radio station. (See “From Wichita to Dallas, WNAD covers central Oklahoma” graphic in WNAD Program Bulletin, page 7 of The Indians for Indians Radio Show). The station’s signal reached a large portion of the state, extending into Kansas and north Texas, but it did not reach far eastern or southeastern Oklahoma, where the Cherokee, Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations are located, so those tribes are not well represented on the show.

Both Whistler and WNAD claimed that 75,000 listeners tuned into the weekly broadcasts. This impressive audience number is reasonable on multiple fronts: the show’s early years coincided with the heyday of radio; the wide geographic reach of the station’s signal; and the show’s popularity with Native communities. Indeed the show lives on in memory, where Native Americans across the state remember it with great fondness.

Most individuals who nowadays reminisce about the show remember it from the 1960s and 1970s, when the Sequoyah Club, the main Native student group at OU, sponsored and hosted it. The Sequoyah Club was guided by longtime OU staff member Boyce Timmons, a well-respected figure at both OU and throughout Indian Country. After Whistler’s untimely death in 1951, the students in the Sequoyah Club, with Timmons’ able coordination, kept the show going another twenty-five years.

Indians for Indians was a novel undertaking in its early years. Its uniqueness and popularity attracted the notice of non-Native media early on, in both local and national outlets such as Newsweek and Time magazines in 1942. A 1943 article in Variety described the show as “the lone Indian language program.” Although those articles use stereotypical language to describe Native Americans that is no longer acceptable, it is still noteworthy that what originated as a local endeavor attracted national attention in leading American magazines with such widespread audiences.

WNAD’s station director in the 1940s, Virginia Hawk, also appreciated the special nature of Indians for Indians. Ms. Hawk recognized the need to preserve the show through recordings. With no local funds to supply recording disks, she was the one who prompted the Library of Congress and the Rockefeller Foundation to take notice of the show. Through her efforts, Benjamin Botkin, then director of the Library of Congress’ Archive of American Folk Song, supplied the initial recording disks to preserve broadcasts.

Not every broadcast was recorded. It seems to also be the case that a few recordings have been lost. The surviving collection consists of about 200 hours of broadcasts of the weekly program. While this might be seem a small sample of weekly broadcasts over a period of thirty-five years, it is enough for these recordings to serve as an important microcosm of United States history told through a Native perspective.

The Indians for Indians collection has been archived in the University of Oklahoma Libraries’ Western History Collections (WHC) for decades. The tapes and other recording media were housed in the University’s radio station office or the American Indian Institute, which Boyce Timmons directed. Eventually the recordings were gathered together and housed in the WHC. Over the years, the WHC’s curators and associate curators, often in conjunction with Timmons, obtained funding to improve descriptions for the recordings or to have a portion of them copied at the Library of Congress. Most recently, in 2018 the OU Libraries received a Council on Library and Information Resources Recordings at Risk grant to have the collection professionally digitized. This digitization project ushers in a new era of access that started in November 2019—most of the recordings are freely available online in the OU Libraries digital collections repository.

The recordings have been regularly used over the decades, not only by academic scholars researching cultural practices or media history, but also by family members of show participants who want to hear their relatives’ voices. In recent years, tribal nations’ language or cultural preservation departments have more often visited the Western History Collections to listen to tapes and obtain copies. Indians for Indians participants often incorporated their Native languages in broadcasts. Not every tribal language in Oklahoma is represented, but for those that are, the recordings are a rare opportunity to hear individuals who spoke fluently, as it was their first language before learning English. Since most Native languages in Oklahoma are endangered, the collection is an important resource to those tribes whose languages are well represented on the show with both spoken content and singing, including Kiowa, Comanche, Muscogee Creek, Seminole, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Pawnee, in addition to smaller amounts of the languages of the Otoe-Missouria, Iowa, and Sac & Fox nations.

Improved online access provides more opportunities for tribal communities to use the recordings for language and cultural revitalization or for primary sources for writing their own tribal histories. Since the recordings became available online in late 2019, it has become clear that more work is necessary to promote the collection and to work with Native communities to improve the descriptive metadata for each broadcast in ways that are meaningful to those communities. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic delayed the discussions with those communities that began in late 2019, but the work will continue for such an important resource.

In addition to these uses of specific broadcasts by Native individuals or communities, when taken as a whole body of work, several themes emerge in the Indians for Indians collection of recordings. A sense of community is foremost, ranging from local communities within a tribe to intertribal groups. The importance of military service is another. The show spanned World War II through Vietnam, and almost every broadcast honors military service by recognizing the contributions and sacrifices of individuals, their families, and communities. Religion is a major theme, represented by a diversity of ancient tribe-specific religions, Native congregations of Christian churches, and local chapters of the Native American Church (the formally organized peyote religion). The importance of education is expressed through the frequent participation of school groups, whose lively performances were always a listener favorite. And finally, the dizzying array of twentieth-century federal policy towards Native Americans is reflected in the show. Don Whistler and other hosts, as well as participants, often advocated for Native rights or announced the activities of tribal governments.

The collection of recordings, which serves as an important cultural archive, is a unique media source to teach students about the diversity of Native nations and about U.S. history. At first glance, it might seem that the contents of the radio show would be of interest only to a specific audience: the Native communities that the show represented. Part of learning the history of the United States, though, is learning how different cultures interacted, sometimes violently, to eventually coalesce into American society. We get different glimpses (or sound bites rather) of this throughout the show:

• The recounting of historic battles between Native Americans and non-Natives alongside the contemporary U.S. military service memorialized during broadcasts.
• The recounting of the histories of participants’ churches tells a lot about the efforts of religious missionaries to assimilate Native Americans; these histories also tell us that Native converts often converted to Christianity of their free will.
• The participation of students from Indian boarding schools, as well as colleges, in Oklahoma is an interesting contrast between assimilationist policies and the agency (self-direction) that the students and their elders express by talking about the importance of education.
• Native Americans maintained tribal identities even while federal policies fluctuated wildly between trying to dismantle tribal governments and then encouraging them to be self-governed
• The diversity of Native American cultures. Even the tribal nations themselves are not homogeneous entities; typically, a tribe is comprised of bands, clans, or other groups who maintain unique identities.

The challenge is that much of this history is very much unknown to most Americans. While the collection of broadcast recordings is an incredible cultural and historical resource, it should be used with care. Some issues to keep in mind:

• Since the show was by Indians for an audience of Indians, much of the content was not explained. The recordings would be a richer historical resource with supplementary curriculum that gave additional context about the content in the broadcasts.
• Some of the history is more complex than what is usually covered in general history survey courses. For example, an announcement on the show in the late 1960s about a carnival to help raise funds for tribal government operations might not catch a listener’s attention, unless they knew that many tribes maintained governmental operations during the Termination Era even though they had little or no support to do so by the federal government.
• It is important for non-Natives to respect the cultural intellectual property represented on the show and not appropriate songs or spoken words. A few of the broadcasts will not be made available online, pending consultations with tribal communities regarding potentially culturally sensitive content. There are also plans to incorporate TK Labels (traditional knowledge labels) into the online collection, including the descriptions of restricted content.

To date, the broadcast recordings are known to have been used in one course, an Honor’s class at OU, “Indigenous Identities, Culture and Politics,” taught by Professor Amanda Minks of the Honors College. For their assignment, students were asked to write a short paper synthesizing their responses listening to one or two broadcasts, in addition to reading a portion of the exhibition book described below. The instructor reported that during class discussion, two students had made a connection between the show and their own families. A similar response to this particular show would probably not be typical outside Oklahoma. However, this example shows how unique content can help students not only in an academic sense, but help students of diverse backgrounds engage in content that reflects their own communities and contributes to a sense of belonging.

The Indians for Indians radio show was innovative in 1941 using the fairly new medium of radio to reach Native Americans throughout a large portion of Oklahoma. It served as a forum for Native self-expression and created a lasting legacy of intertribal life. The continuation of the show from 1973 after it was no longer broadcast at OU is a testament to its enduring value, produced by individuals (sometimes with tribal government support) over the ensuing years. From 2000 until recently (2020/early 2021), the contemporary incarnation of the Indians for Indians show was hosted by Comanche Nation member, Edmond Mahseet, and broadcast over 98.5 KACO radio (online at superstarcountry985.com).

To promote the improved accessibility of the Indians for Indians broadcast recordings, the OU Libraries opened an exhibition on November 14, 2019, Native Voices Over the Airwaves: The Indians for Indians Radio Show. The opening reception was well attended by family members of several of the show’s participants. An evening tribute performance included groups from several tribes, many of whom were descendants of show participants. A companion book to the exhibition, The Indians for Indians Radio Show, is available online at the OU Libraries SHAREOK repository.

Closing Thoughts

After having had two years to reflect on the online presence of the recordings after the busyness of the grant work, making the digitized audio recordings available, and celebrating the opening of the exhibition with a performance by several Native groups, there is so much more to be done. Mostly getting the word out to the communities who participated in the show, but also augmenting each broadcast with related content such as photos and richer descriptions that provide context about what the songs are or what the discussions are about, perhaps including oral histories of the show’s participants or more likely, their descendants. This is necessary not only for non-Native audiences, but to help younger generations of Indigenous youth learn about their tribes’ histories and cultures. Making a collection like this accessible is not simply a matter of putting a list of broadcasts up on a website, but spending time and resources to work with Native communities to improve everyone’s experiences with understanding the content in the broadcast recordings.

Photograph and Sound Clips:

Pawnee Indian School students in WNAD studio. Host Don Whistler is second from right in the back. OU Photographic Service Collection, no. 16344, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries.

 David Apekaum introduces the Kiowa War Mothers, Carnegie Chapter and first song dedicated to Gold Star Mothers. April 25, 1947.

 Sound Clip – Thomas Roughface, twelve-year-old student of Pawnee Indian School reading his essay “Changing Conditions and Adjustment by Education.” April 13, 1948 broadcast.

 Sound Clip – Greeting and introduction by Don Whistler. Otoe Community Church (Red Rock, Oklahoma) members singing in Otoe language led by Joe Young. May 4, 1948 broadcast.