Hopi language carried in the air; Yakima Nation preps its station
Originally published in Current, Jan. 29, 2001
By Mike JanssenIt used to be that an Arizona Hopi crier would announce the day's news from the highest point in the village.
But Jimmy Lucero, a traditional crier, has a new vantage. Instead of overlooking the mesas, he uses 69,000 watts to spread the word from the control room of KUYI, a new Hopi-run FM station in Kings Canyon, Ariz. Every morning, Lucero signs on with a cry that evokes the tribe's past and heralds its future.
Like other public radio stations, KUYI brings news, music and entertainment to listeners. But it and other Native stations have their own unique responsibilities: teaching native tongues, connecting far-flung pockets of tribe members in rural America, and perpetuating old traditions in a new medium.
As KUYI trains volunteers and builds toward an 18-hour day, other Native stations are on their way to commanding the airwaves, including a new AM station in Washington state. Meanwhile, producers and station staffers are organizing a summit to give Native radio new money and energy.
FM: Freaking Major
"The idea [for KUYI] came directly from the Hopi people," says Loris Taylor, an associate director for the Hopi Foundation, KUYI's licensee. "It's by far one of the hardest projects we've ever done. And, although we're on the air, there are many more challenges."
Members of the Hopi community started work on KUYI five years ago, but, lacking nonprofit status, they approached Taylor's foundation for help. It won planning and construction grants from the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program and eventually assumed responsibility for starting the station. The station took its call letters from the Hopi word for water, kuyi—pronounced "goo-yee."
At the foundation's request, Susan Braine, an Assiniboine Sioux from Montana, left her home and moved to Arizona to help put KUYI on the air. Braine founded KNBA, the country's only urban Native station, in Anchorage, Alaska. Today, she oversees the fledgling KUYI, which will employ three or four full-time staff members.
The station is training more than 20 volunteers, many with no broadcasting experience, to air a bilingual Hopi-English mix of news, sports, and an eclectic blend of Native and non-Native music. Listeners especially like reggae, Braine says.
But people involved with the station say KUYI is about much more than Bob Marley and basketball games. When the Hopi Foundation first started work on KUYI, it surveyed potential listeners about why they wanted a station. Taylor says the most popular answer was "to teach and encourage the use of the Hopi language."
Today, that seems more important than ever. Taylor says that, in some villages, only 5 percent of Natives speak the Hopi language. "Within the next generation, that's going to come down to a very quick zero."
To make matters worse for supporters of the Hopi tongue, Arizona voters recently passed Proposition 203, a controversial measure that will end bilingual education by forcing non-native English speakers to enter a year-long immersion program. Taylor says many of the Natives in Arizona's 21 tribes opposed the measure. Some even marched to the capitol in Phoenix in protest. Mexican-Americans also joined the fight against Proposition 203, she says.
Two months after it passed, Taylor is clearly upset about the ballot measure. "In Arizona, we seem to have a very narrow view of our place in the world," she says. "It's an isolated view that seems to tell us there's only one right way, and that way is through the English language."
But Taylor's pessimism about her own state is tempered by her hope, and love, for KUYI. She says that since the station signed on, Dec. 20 [2000], more Hopi families than ever have bought radios. Hopi kids call the new station "FM"—for "Freaking Major." Lucero, known as "Jimbo," is a household name. Religious elders say they can't get anything done in the morning because they're listening to the radio.
And when Taylor went to visit her godmother, she found her making piki, a kind of thin pancake made of blue cornmeal, in her piki house.
"Lo and behold, right next to her was a little tiny radio," Taylor says, laughing.
KUYI is already boosting interest in the Hopi language, she says. The station will start working with a linguist from the University of Arizona and the Hopi Tribes Cultural Preservation Office to translate a Hopi-language curriculum into radio programming. Listeners are clamoring for more Hopi-language programming, she says.
"It's like the Hopi language is cool overnight," she says.
Native radio summit in June
As KUYI cranks up the reggae, another tribe miles away is working on its own station. The Yakima Nation recently won FCC approval to buy KENE, a 1,000-watt AM station southeast of Yakima, Wash., from a local Spanish-language broadcaster.
The Yakima tribe has been airing Native music in a time-sharing agreement with the previous owner. Soon it will begin airing bilingual Yakima-English programming full-time, and, with the purchase of satellite equipment, will take American Indian Radio on Satellite (AIROS) programming. The tribe plans to get more funding from PTFP.
Like KUYI, KENE will help listeners learn the native language. But Alonso Garcia of the Yakima Nation says the station will also reach out to the area's diverse population, which includes whites, Filipinos, Hispanics, African-Americans, and descendants of Japanese and German immigrants. And it wants young people to host programs.
"This radio station is going to help us improve communication between tribal members. At the same time, we're going to use it to help people in the non-Indian communities understand the Yakima Nation," Garcia says. "Sometimes, you have a neighbor here, but you don't know too much about them. This is going to help."
As new arrivals to Native radio, KUYI and KENE staff will be able to join their colleagues at a Native radio summit June 3-7 [2001]. KWSO at the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon will host the event, which organizer Peggy Berryhill expects will draw 120 to 150 people. CPB gave organizers $200,000 for the event, and the National Federation of Community Broadcasters is also helping.
The summit will bring together producers, engineers, station managers, program directors, and staff from national organizations to discuss the future of Native radio. Participants will study the mission of the service and talk about other ways to fund stations and programs. Summit organizers are working with First Nations Development Institution, a Virginia-based group.
One pressing issue, Berryhill says, is how to reach urban Native Americans. Over half of the country's American Indians live in cities, she says, while almost all Native stations serve mostly rural communities.
Using his native language, Hopi, KUYI morning host Jimmy "Jimbo" Lucero announces the debut of the station at a Dec. 21 [2000] party. Susan Braine stands to his right. (Photo: Loris Taylor.)
Aid to four new Native stations
Excerpted from Current, Oct. 16, 2000
In October 2000, the federal Public Telecommunications Facilities Program, a partial funder of many new stations, backed four new Native stations in the agency's annual grant round.
Two received construction grants exceeding $300,000—the Tohono O'oodham Nation, for a station at Sells, Ariz., and the Northern Cheyenne Tribe for a station at Lame Deer, Mont.
Two other Native groups received small grants to plan stations—the Eastern Band of Cherokee, for a station at Cherokee, N.C., and the Piegan Institute for a station serving the Blackfeet Indian Reservation near Browning, Mont.
Web page posted Feb. 7, 2001
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