Tiokasin Ghosthorse

Tiokasin Ghosthorse is an educator, musician and international speaker on peace and the global issues facing Native people. He plays the traditional Lakota cedar wood flute and presents workshops introducing and sharing the tradition and appreciation of this cultural art and music. Tiokasin performs worldwide and has been featured at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the United Nations.

Tiokasin is most concerned with Native youth suicide and targets his workshops to locales where suicide attempts are devastatingly high. In recent years, Tiokasin has been working with Lakota children in the capacity of promoting cultural values and music appreciation through his educational workshops. When he performs on his Lakota flute he conveys to audiences, both young and old, the important aspects of the culture and traditional creation stories within the music.

Tiokasin is a 2016 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee of the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Tiokasin is also Host and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio, a one-hour live weekly radio program that he founded in 1993 and is now syndicated on 70 public and community radio stations across Turtle Island. He is a guest faculty member at Yale University’s School of Divinity, Ecology and Forestry focusing on the cosmology, diversity and perspectives on the relational/egalitarian vs. rational/hierarchal thinking processes of Western society; a Spiritual Ecology Youth Fellowship faculty member working with young ecology professionals; and serves on boards of several charitable organizations dedicated to bringing non-western education to Native and non-Native children. Tiokasin is a 2016 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee of the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy.

During his fellowship, Tiokasin plans to record a new CD and develop an accompanying educational component that he hopes will enlighten listeners to the Lakol Wicohan (Lakota lifeway) through his traditional music.

When I present the values of music or olowan (song), it is done with the premise of Mitakuye Oyasin (all my relations).
~ Tiokasin Ghosthorse

Mitakuye Oyasin, a phrase from the Lakota culture, honors a worldview of interconnectedness.