Kili Radio, the "Voice of the Lakota Nation," is broadcast out of a small wooden house in the vast countryside of South Dakota. There, people converge to speak to the community about daily concerns and in doing so, strengthen their sense of identity. Daily existence on America's poorest reservation is hard. We meet people like Roxanne Two Bulls, who’s trying to start over again on the land of her ancestors after a difficult life nearly destroyed by alcoholism; and Bruce, the white lawyer who for thirty years has been trying to free an American Indian militant who’s been fighting for equal rights for his people.

Everything comes together at Kili Radio. Instead of sending smoke signals the radio station transmits its own signals across a vast and magnificent landscape with a delightful combination of humor and melancholy. We hear native hip hop and complaints about broken windshields. Some of their pride has been restored with the radio broadcast; the listeners now feel that it really is acceptable to be Lakota. After all, "Kili" means awesome in Lakota. As the young DJ Derrick Janis who is discovering his gift for music says: "We once were warriors, I like to think about that. Back in those days I’d be a warrior on a horse. But today, I’m a DJ on a hill." A film about the role of media, as well as an up-close look at present day life on the reservation.

"A fine piece of filmmaking. The message it conveys--that indigenous people survive, that they struggle against great obstacles, that they are modern in every important sense of the term including using modern technology(radio, websites,television and every other medium) to preserve and promote themselves--is a critical one for schoars, students,and the general public to hear." i
Jack David Eller, Anthropology Review Database

Swiss Film Prize for Best Documentary, 2009

Film and Video Center, National Museum of the American Indian, NY, 2009

Brooklyn International Film Festival, 2009