Motivated by Our Lakota People and Families

We strive to represent our strong yet small community, which welcomes and urges humanity to listen with open minds to our stories.

Reed Two Bulls (Oglala Sioux) is a musician and is enrolled on Pine Ridge Reservation, SD. Reed is the lead singer of the band The Wake Singers. She attends blues jams in Minneapolis and sells hand painted jewelry when not working on music. Reed is a 2021 First Peoples Fund Artists in Business Leadership Fellow.

The Wake Singers are a recording group of multi-instrumentalists. Their musical journey started when they were teenagers living in Rapid City, SD, playing music in their basement. Art and music were always incorporated into their ideas. After playing in various bands in Rapid City they left to attend art school at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where they were able to experiment with the visual, writing, and musical aspects of their vision. After completing art school, they brought back what they learned to their own communities of Red Shirt Table and Rapid City, SD. The idea of having a recording studio was planted into their mission plan. The Wake Singers has always been a family band. It was in the Fall of 2018 that Reed Two Bulls joined the band. The Wake Singers have performed in many venues, among them the Kennedy Center and the Black Hills Drive-In Covid Relief Benefit.

They didn’t choose the name by accident.

When cousins Reed, Doug and Mike Two Bulls set out to build a recording studio they dubbed it “Pejuta Studios,” using the Lakota word for medicine.

“We want to make our studio accessible to Native musicians who can’t pay for studio time,” said Reed, who sings lead vocals in the trio’s band called The Wake Singers. “We believe there is a lot of Indigenous music that isn’t getting heard due to the lack of access to a recording studio.”

Reed was recently named a First People’s Fund Artist in Business Leadership Fellow and awarded funds to assemble recording equipment to build a professional studio in Rapid City, S.D. The first goal is to finish an album in the works. “We have a whole array of songs,” said Reed who calls herself the “baby cousin” of the band. “I’m really excited to get started” with the new equipment.

Reed bought a couple of microphones and a pedal tuner in Minneapolis and, with some other gear she ordered online, began setting up in the band’s “basement space” in Rapid City. They hope eventually to decamp into larger quarters where they plan to help other Lakota recording artists such as Welby June and Wahpe Louella put down some tracks. “I’m really looking forward to this opportunity from First People’s Fund.” said Reed. “It’s important for our communities to have a studio that is completely Indigenous owned and operated. ”

Reed grew up in Los Angeles and Minneapolis where she sat in with a number of other bands before joining the all Oglala Lakota Wake Singers in 2018. She bonded -- as cousins and musicians -- with her bandmates last year working in the Pine Ridge community of Red Shirt Table. “We held two recording sessions out on the reservation which brought us closer as a band and helped to refine our sound,” said Reed. “Camping out on the prairie while simultaneously recording some of our album was absolutely a once in a lifetime experience.”

Doug and Mike’s collaboration stretches back farther.  They grew up as close as brothers in Red Shirt Table and Rapid City and began their musical journey when they were teenagers. They each left to attend the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M., where they explored both musical and visual expression. Something they continue to this day.

“We were profoundly affected by the protests over the death of George Floyd and decided we couldn't sit idly by,” said Mike. They made prints and billboards that supported Black Lives Matter protests and used music to propel the message as well. “We held several live streams that supported the BLM movement to bring awareness,” he said. All while remaining close to their Indigenous heritage.

“We are actively motivated by our Lakota people and families,” said Reed. “We strive to represent our strong yet small community, which welcomes and urges humanity to listen with open minds to our stories.”