Wednesday, September 14th, Grand Ronde, Oregon - The Spirt Mountain Community Fund granted the KBOO Foundation a $20,000 gift this month to support digitization, saving and sharing of KBOO programming from communities of color from our historic analog archives.
The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde through the Spirit Mountain Community Fund fulfill their Native tradition of potlatch, a ceremony at which good fortune is distributed. The Spirit Mountain Community Fund’s focus is to improve the quality of life in Northwest Oregon through community investments that provide lasting benefits consistent with the Tribe’s culture and values.
KBOO's archiving project will convert almost 50 years of historic audio programs from analog open reel tape to digital format, catalog them using PB Core metadata in a database, and make them accessible to the public through our website, as well as other archival websites. KBOO has, in house, over 7500 separate interviews, investigative reports, readings, & music. We will collaborate with the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, Portland State University and others for meta-data, sorting, distribution and access.
These tapes are Oregon history, invaluable in offering unique insights into nationally and locally significant events as well as related progress and change.
This grant will focus on preservation of tapes from communities and programmers of color over 50 years, including news of the events affecting these communities. From the beginning, the KBOO charter has been to serve those that are the most underserved. A majority of our programmers and nearly all of our programming is underrepresented in the main stream media and elsewhere. KBOO provides 100’s of hours of free broadcast training and mentoring monthly to ensure these communities have the tools and the equipment to share their stories broadly.
KBOO’s 1000’s of hours of materials include interviews with: Oren Lyons, Isabel Allende, Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Lynda Berry, Gwendolyn Brooks, Thomas Banyacya, Judy Chicago, Audre Lord, Jack Schwartz, Angela Davis, LaDonna Harris, Ward Churchill, Rigoberta Menchu, Russell Means, Leslie Marmon Silko, Robert Conley, Winona LaDuke, Lillian Pitt, Donald Sampson, Dennis Bigelow, Jim Blashfield, and Rick Bartow.
Thank you to the Spirit Mountain Community Fund for their support of KBOO and for all they do in our community.