Oyate Today in May on SDPB

Oyate Today is a 30-minute interview program on the history and living culture of indigenous people in the Northern Plains. Oyate Today is produced by Native Sun News Today publisher Tim Giago (Oglala Lakota) and Jackie Giago, hosted by Richie Richards (Oglala Lakota), and filmed at Prairie Edge in downtown Rapid City.

Paulette Davison.

Paulette Davison – CEO, Rapid City Regional Health

SDPB1: Sunday, May 5, noon (11am)

Regional Health in Rapid City has the busiest Emergency Department in both South Dakota and North Dakota. Thirty-percent of patients served at Regional Health are Native American. Davison discusses Regional’s relationship with Indian Health Services, Sioux San, the Great Plains Tribal Chairman Board and expanding and accelerating the diversity of caregivers and equity of care at Regional to help reduce and eliminate healthcare disparities.

Eric Zimmer.

Eric Zimmer – Historian & Researcher, Rapid City Indian Lands Initiative

SDPB1: Sunday, May 12, noon (11am)

The Rapid City Indian Lands Initiative is an all-volunteer organization studying land issues involving Native people in the Rapid City-area throughout the last 125 years. A research fellow at Pine Ridge’s Center for American Indian Research and Native Studies (CAIRNS), Zimmer discusses his research concerning displaced peoples, urban segregation, and areas in West Rapid City, the Sioux Addition, and the Sioux San Hospital, former home of the Rapid City Indian Boarding School.

Dr. Jacob Weasel.

Dr. Jacob Weasel (Cheyenne Sioux) General Surgeon, Rapid City Regional Health

SDPB1: Sunday, May 19, noon (11am)

Dr. Weasel discusses his personal calling to pursue medicine, including the impact of his grandmother, Ruth LaMere, who worked for many years as a nurse with Indian Health Services at Fort Belknap Indian Community in Montana. Dr. Weasel also shares his hopes to develop a research plan to study the positive impact of shifting to an ancestral, pre-colonization diet to address issues of heart and kidney disease and diabetes.

Kooper Caraway.

Kooper Caraway – President, Sioux Falls AFL-CIO

SDPB1: Sunday, May 26, noon (11am)

Caraway talks about the goals of the labor movement and his role in working to fight workplace exploitation and disparities. From Texas, Caraway relocated to South Dakota to serve as Lead Organizer for AFSCME Council 65 in 2017. In 2018, Caraway was elected president of the Sioux Falls AFL-CIO. At 27, he became the Youngest Central Labor Council president in the U.S.