WBAI, New York City - 99.5 FM

First Voices brings to the airwaves the experiences, perspectives and struggles of Indigenous people who have been almost totally excluded from both mainstream and progressive, alternative media. Our purpose is to help ensure the continuance and survival of Indigenous cultures and Nations by letting the People tell their own story, in their own words, and often in their own languages and ways of speaking. And with as little outside interference and interruption as possible.

As we open up the airwaves week after week to the voices seldom heard in the last 511 years, it is our hope that the newcomers to this Land - that is, every immigrant group - will begin to question their assumptions about Indigenous people here. We hope they become educated and informed, get activated, break down their romanticization, break free of their stereotypes, and begin to form real relationships with Indigenous communities based, finally, on respect and real understanding.

This one hour is devoted to bringing the voices of the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island (i.e., North America) and connecting their struggles with those of other Indigenous Peoples around the world. And while never forgetting that standing upon Mother Earth is a great responsibility.

We ask our guests with great respect to do the honor of coming on the program to offer their knowledge, wisdom, and experience, a knowledge that has been handed down over hundreds of thousands of years. It is a responsibility we take very seriously, and we know it is with great urgency that we ask these voices to be shared in this time of changes. We hope we offer our listeners a perspective they have been missing for far too long. The voice America has tried to silence, the voices of Indigenous Peoples.

Tiokasin knows that First Voices Indigenous Radio belongs to all the Native Peoples here in Turtle Island (renamed North America by the occupiers). The responsibilities that can be taught by listening to the real land owners(so to speak) and understanding the knowledge, the wisdom, the struggles, and the unheard voices .

It is said that if the lies continue about Native peoples it will create an illusion that all Americans will dearly pay for in the future...and the future is now. What kind of world are Americans creating with their priviledge of denying Native people's voice and the reality of truth that Natives experience daily.

Tiokasin's global perspective reality is the experience of living with and understanding these two worlds - Indigenous and non-Indigenous. The teachings of the Lakota are profoundŠ.and relevant in the universe today! Lakota knowledge empowers through inclusion, by teaching responsibility of choices. This contributes to an emerging world, affecting the environmental/Mother Earth issues we as human beings ponder when it comes to what it means to be civilized.

Tiokasin Ghost Horse is co-host and co-producer of First Voices Indigenous Radio. He spoke, as a teenager, at the United Nations Conference on Human Rights International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. He participated in several occupations including Wounded Knee, SD in 1973, Lyle Point, WA, Western Shoshone, NV, and Big Mountain, AZ, and has been actively educating people who live on Turtle Island (N. America) and overseas since that time. Tiokasin is also a survivor of the "Reign of Terror" from 1972-1976 on the Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs Boarding and Church Missionary School systems designed to "kill the Indian and save the man".

Okay, from the start: I am not a "Native American." This misnomer was conjured up by the politically correct U.S. government. I am an Indigenist in all meanings of the word. I think all the Native peoples here in the 'occupied' lands called America would agree that we were free before America ever appeared. I've heard it said that America means "the love of riches."

Some of the endeavors that keep me from intellectualizing, rationalizing and devolving into the condescendence of thinking "American" are my life as Educator/Flute-maker/Musician/Performing Artist/Cultural Consultant/Spoken Word Lecturer and a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota. Some people call us "Sioux", but that tells me they are only uninformed. I could tell you what forms of "western mentality" institutionalized degrees I was duped into, or I could tell you about the path that leads to becoming a human being.

I try to allow a language of common sense dialogue, and not try to get all fancy with a language of deceit called "English". After all, English is a foreign language to the Native peoples who are still here. My evolvement in two worlds allows a thought process of coexisting issues, problems and challenges within an "Indigenous Thinking Process." The Indigenous Thinking Process is neither out-dated nor out-of-step with modern, as it always draws strength and wisdom from the past. There can be no peace on earth, unless there is peace with earth.