Indians for Indians

Ho Ho Nekon, Kesh-ke-kosh a'nee naw.

Every Tuesday afternoon this cheery salutation whangs out to some 50,000 American Indians from Station WNAD at the University of Oklahoma. Roughly translated, it means: "Hello, my friends, this is Kesh-ke-kosh, me, myself, I am here, speaking." Kesh-ke-kosh is Don Whistler, a rugged Sac and Fox Indian, who persuaded his alma mater to let him go on the air two years ago. His half-hour program (Indians for Indians) has the only regular Indian language broadcast in the U.S. It is unrehearsed and almost scriptless. Because of the diversity of speech among Indian tribes, much of the broadcast has to be delivered in English. "They all under stand that," says Whistler.

Around noontime his listeners gather at lunchrooms, gas stations, stores, and in Oklahoma's Indian schools to hear their program. They generally get a brief resume of what Joe Yellow Horse, Chauncy Matlock, Sleeping Rain or some other Indian boy is doing in the Pacific or North Africa. They hear the latest Indian gossip, news on Indian affairs, many a tall tale from an elder brave.

Whistler sometimes undertakes to set his people straight on their history. In one broadcast he interviewed a Comanche named Yellow Fish, last survivor of the Battle of Adobe Walls, which took place on or about June 27, 1874, in what is now Hutchinson County, Tex. Whistler's opening remarks were notable:

"If your knowledge of that battle is limited to what has been written in the ordinary school history, you may think that it was just a bunch of wild Indians out on the warpath to get a few scalps. But let me assure you that such was not the case. Those Indians were fighting, as any freedom-loving people will fight, for their property and their home land. The white men at Adobe Walls were trespassers in every sense of the word. They admitted it themselves."

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