Hidden in the grooves: A new book maps Native music's overlooked legacy
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Ryan Nelson was at home in Minneapolis listening to a London radio station stream when something stopped him in his tracks.
"I hear on the radio — unmistakably — I hear Dakota language," Nelson recalled. "I rushed over to the computer. I'm like, 'Who is this?'"
The voice belonged to Justis Brokenrope — a musician, record collector and DJ spinning his regular set on NTS Radio, an internet station. Brokenrope, Sicangu Lakota, was doing what he does: unearthing rare Native recordings and spinning them for digital audiences.
That moment of recognition, across an ocean, set something in motion.
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Nelson, an author and artist who has been learning Dakota for several years and traces his own lineage to Dakota relatives in the Minnesota River valley, had just received funding for a series of artbooks. He knew immediately he'd found one of his subjects.
As it turns out, the two men live about a mile apart in Minneapolis.
Together, Nelson and Brokenrope spent a day poring over Brokenrope's personal archive — vinyl records, 8-tracks, cassettes, collectibles — to produce the Wathéča Records Sourcebook, a compact but dense compendium of contemporary Native music. The 120-plus-page book is packed with album covers, photos, posters and set lists drawn from roughly a quarter of Brokenrope's 250-to-300-piece collection.
Think of it as a treasure map. Readers can use it as a guide to find songs on streaming platforms or dig through internet record collector auction sites on their own.
Brokenrope has spent years doing exactly that kind of digging — pulling records from dollar bins, rescuing overlooked artists from obscurity, more recently scouring online. His collection runs from country to rock to heavy metal. Much of it is genuinely rare: recordings made by artists from rural reservation communities who traveled long distances to record and paid out of pocket for small vinyl print runs.
"It's sort of this underrepresented, hidden part of the music scene," Nelson said. "And here's this guy, Justis, sort of unearthing it."
But before any of that could happen, the two had to build a sense of trust.
"With anything Native, I'm always second-, third-guessing — who should I be working with? Is this person the right person to handle this material?” Brokenrope said.
He invited Nelson to his kitchen table. They asked each other questions. Nelson showed him books he admired as models for a possible collaboration.
"I liked all of it," Brokenrope said.
Brokenrope said the experience of flipping through the finished book mirrors the thrill of finding a rare record — like the day he came across Electric Warriors, an album by Winterhawk, a heavy metal band.
"I saw the cover before I ever heard the music," he said. "It's four uncles posted up on the bank of a river in California, in partial regalia, but also wearing blue jeans — with all their instruments — and they look ready to fight. It's just a really hard album cover."
Nelson wove Dakota phrases throughout the book, a nod to that first radio moment and to Brokenrope's work as a DJ.
The Wathéča Records Sourcebook is selling fast — available at independent bookstores in Minneapolis and online — and the two are already weighing a second edition.
For Nelson, it keeps coming back to that day, hearing a familiar language from an unexpected place.
"Just to hear Justis speaking in Dakota — it was just a really special moment," Nelson said. "When I listen to him, I'm so proud."
This story comes from the Upper Midwest Newsroom, a public media collaboration between Wisconsin Public Radio, South Dakota Public Broadcasting, Prairie Public in North Dakota and Minnesota Public Radio News made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
