Tiokasin Ghosthorse

Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Lakota), Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota.  Tiokasin is a survivor of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs Boarding and Church Missionary School systems designed to “kill the Indian and save the man,” and the “Reign of Terror” from 1972 to 1976 on the Pine Ridge, Cheyenne River and Rosebud Lakota Reservations. He has a long history of Indigenous activism and advocacy.  He is a guest lecturer at many universities and international speaker and on Peace, Indigenous and Mother Earth perspectives, cosmology, ecology and forestry and perspectives on the relational/egalitarian vs. rational/hierarchal thinking processes of western society. Tiokasin is the founder, host and executive producer of the 30 year-old “First Voices Radio”, a one-hour live program syndicated to 70 radio stations in the US and Canada.

He was awarded Staten Island’s Peacemaker Award in 2013 and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 by The International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Tiokasin serves on boards of several charitable organizations dedicated to bringing non-western education to Native and non-Native children.  He is a master musician and teacher of magical, ancient and modern sounds and has performed for audiences worldwide.  A Sun dancer in the Lakota Nation tradition, he describes himself as a “perfectly flawed human being.”   www.firstvoicesindigenousradio.org