Tabor Czech Days participants making kolaces. Photo by Becky Hermann. Part of the cultural documentation found in South Dakota's Local Legacies projects.

South Dakota

The American Folklife Center was created in 1976 by the U.S. Congress through Public Law 94-201 and charged to "preserve and present American folklife." The Center incorporates the Archive of Folk Culture, which was established at the Library of Congress in 1928, and is now one of the largest collections of ethnographic material from the United States and around the world.

Collections

The collections of the American Folklife Center contain rich and varied materials from South Dakota that document the diversity of the state's folk traditions. Among its recordings are Works Progress Administration Federal Music Project documentation of fiddle and banjo music; Hutterite music and religious services; songs of the Lakota Sioux; and a 1955 interview with Dewey Beard, a Lakota Sioux and the last survivor of the Battle of Little Big Horn.

• South Dakota Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture [draft available upon request]

South Dakota participated in the Library's Bicentennial Local Legacies project, which includes documentation of local traditions and celebrations for the American Folklife Center's Archive of Folk Culture.

• View South Dakota's Local Legacies projects.
  

Concert Webcast

November 15, 2007: Hoop Dances by Dallas Chief Eagle and Jasmine Pickner. Rosebud and Crow Creek Sioux tribes of South Dakota. [webcast and event flyer]