KILI Radio, The voice of the Lakota Nation, celebrates 32nd anniversary this year. Photo from Facebook
Brattleboro Rotary continues to come through for KILI Radio
Station sees equipment, re-conditioned computers, new board
By Tom Crash
LCT Correspondent PORCUPINE BUTTE – Using financial resources raised during film festivals in March of 2014 and 2015, the Brattleboro Rotary Club in Vermont purchased a new broadcast board for KILI Radio. The new equipment has been delivered and is just waiting to be installed in the station’s main studio at Porcupine Butte. “Since 2004, we’ve been using a series of mixing boards for our main studio. We’ve had a broadcast board at the top of our needs list for the past 10 years,” said station manager Tom Casey. “We just couldn’t come up with the $6,000 for a professional broadcast board. All of our staff and DJ’s are really looking forward to having the new board installed.” It was just over three years ago when John Willis, a photographer and college professor, had a book of photographs of Pine Ridge come out, along with a photo exhibit that attracted the attention of Martin Cohn, the new president of the Brattleboro Rotary Club. Rotary clubs usually look for foreign projects -- they described Pine Ridge as a sovereign nation and looked for ways they could make an impact.
Still in the box, KILI is anxiously waiting to get the new broadcast board installed.
“Since 2012, the Rotary Club has sent 136 re-conditioned lap top computers to Pine Ridge -- they’ve gone to KILI Radio, Little Wound School, Oglala Lakota College’s nursing school and Learning Resource Center, Leonard Little Finger’s language school in Oglala, Wendell Yellow Bull’s work towards a new community center in Slim Buttes as well as a number of individual families on Pine Ridge reservation,” said John Willis, who has been coming to Pine Ridge for the past 23 years and has helped coordinate the Exposures Cross Cultural Youth Arts Program for the last 14 years. “We have been looking for ways to make an impact," Willis added. "Rotary would like to continue to work to make a difference, newer lap tops, maybe Macs but larger projects, like putting a real grocery store on the reservation."
One of the first Rotary contributions to KILI was a set of microphones for the station’s guest studio, helping to mic up every guest.
Rotary first helped KILI Radio put out one of their annual calendars then helped purchase both some live remote equipment and microphones for the guest studio, where anywhere from one to six or seven guests do a show. After raising $3,000 from the film festival in 2014, that wasn’t enough for the broadcast board so Rotary encouraged KILI to look into renewable energy. KILI contacted Henry Red Cloud and his Lakota Solar Enterprises. Red Cloud had installed a solar array two years ago and said he could put together another project. By the time the project came together, Rotary had raised another $3,000 and they went right out and purchased the broadcast board. Henry's training workshop plans to install an even larger solar array on KILI’s south-facing roof starting in late July. The station is now out hustling up $3,000 to make sure the event happens. Counting the original solar array, which was no cost to KILI and the planned new array, Red Cloud states for the $3,000 in seed money, KILI would be getting a total value of $18,000 in solar equipment. Willis returned to Pine Ridge late last month for the Exposures Cross Cultural Youth Arts Program. The three-week program works out of Red Cloud high school and includes 15 students from eight states. "We will see a number of students from here going to Vermont next year," Willis said. "We see a number of connections as student and church groups connect with communities here and in Vermont." Find the award-winning Lakota Country Times on the Internet, Facebook and Twitter.
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