Digitized Oral Histories

These oral history recordings were produced as joint projects between the University of South Dakota in Vermillion and the South Dakota State Historical Society. The South Dakota Oral History Project (SDOHP) focused on collecting interviews with South Dakota residents whose recollections dated back to 1900 and before. The emphasis of these interviews was placed on pioneer recollections of life on the prairie, but also included topics of current interest. For example, a series of interviews with survivors of the 1972 Rapid City flood were recorded during the summer of 1972. There are also several recordings of South Dakota musicians playing and discussing their work.

The American Indian Research Project (AIRP) focused on collecting interviews with Native Americans; teachers from reservation schools; monks, priests, and nuns involved with the Marty Mission and other mission schools; and individuals involved in the 1973 Custer Courthouse incident and Wounded Knee protests. Common topics in the interviews include tribal government, the Indian Reorganization Act, the American Indian Movement, experiences at boarding schools, reservation life, Sioux culture, prejudice and paternalism, and medicine men.

In 2010 it was discovered that neither USD nor the State Archives had a complete set of the interviews, so plans were made to digitize the tapes and share the files. The tapes were digitized by the Oral History Center and sent to the State Archives in 2013 and 2014. The digital audio is saved in uncompressed WAV files. Any supporting documentation, such as release forms and interview transcripts, were also scanned and saved as PDF files. All file names contain the oral history tape number.