Kevin Locke, who brought traditional Native American culture to audiences all over the world through flute songs, hoop dances and stories, helping to preserve both the art forms and the Lakota language, died on Sept. 30 in Hill City, S.D. He was 68.
His son, Ohiyesá Locke, said the cause was an asthma attack he suffered after performing at the Crazy Horse Memorial nearby.
For decades Mr. Locke was a familiar sight at cultural festivals, in schools and in theaters, playing his traditional wooden flute, performing hoop dances and explaining the history and meaning of the works.
He performed for small groups and in larger settings like Symphony Space in New York City, where he and his Kevin Locke Native Dance Ensemble presented a program in 2008 titled “The Drum Is the Thunder, the Flute Is the Wind.”
Sometimes he represented Native American culture in a global context, as he did at the 1996 New Haven Festival, where he shared the bill with the Celtic folk band Solas, Cirque Baroque from France, the South African group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the Shanghai Quartet and performers from the Beijing Opera.
In a statement, Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, called Mr. Locke “a vibrant voice of South Dakota arts.” Among his achievements, she noted, was helping to pass a bill recognizing the traditional flute as “the state’s official Indigenous musical instrument.” She signed it into law in March.
In an interview cited by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1990, when he received its National Heritage Fellow designation, Mr. Locke spoke of what he hoped to achieve in his home state with his performances.
“There is a great need to continue the work of bridging the gap between the Indian and non-Indian cultures of South Dakota,” he said. “I have been able to teach countless Indian and non-Indian children to sing, to dance, to stand inside the hoop of Indian culture, and I know that this experience will have lasting influence with regard to future positive race relations within the state.”
Kevin Edward Locke was born on June 23, 1954, on the Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota and was a member of the Hunkpapa community of the Lakota of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. In Lakota, his website says, his name was Tokaheya Inajin, or “First to Rise.”
His mother, Patricia (McGillis) Locke, received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 1991 for her work to save tribal languages that were growing extinct throughout the United States. His father, Charles, was a contractor.
Mr. Locke earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education at the University of North Dakota and a master’s in education administration at the University of South Dakota. He started his career as an educator.
As a young man he had lived with an uncle who spoke only Lakota and who began teaching him both the language and the cultural traditions. Tribal elders showed Mr. Locke how to make and play wooden flutes, and he developed an interest in preserving and reviving traditional courting songs and other music.
“At the time I started this revival, the last exponent of the flute-playing tradition, Richard Fool Bull, had already departed from this life,” he said in the Heritage Fellow interview. “My only recourse was to seek out those who could still recall the vocal traditions from which the instrumental flute melodies are derived.”
In the late 1970s he became an adherent of the Baha’i faith, which emphasizes equality and the unity of all people, concepts that fit well with the Native American hoop dances he had begun to perform. Soon he gave up his career as an educator in favor of educating through performance.
“It wasn’t really so much a matter of conscious choice,” he told The Tampa Bay Times in 1991, “but the more I tried to rebel against that and maintain my position in the regular work force, the more I felt I should focus on performing,”
Mr. Locke was also a longtime board member of the Lakota Language Consortium, a nonprofit organization that seeks to preserve the language.
“Locke looked to the past and to the future,” that group said in statement, “drawing on his heritage to create a better future for his people.”
Mr. Locke’s marriage to Dorothy Locke ended in divorce. In addition to his son, he is survived by his wife, Ceylan Isgor-Locke; three daughters, Kimimila, Waniya and Patricia Locke; two sisters, Winona and Jana Locke; a brother, Charles; and two half sisters, Connie Zupan and Carla Peterson.
In a video posted on YouTube in 2013, Mr. Locke is seen dancing and explaining the symbolism of the hoop, noting that its shape is one in which people gather all over the world.
It “represents love,” he says, “represents the family, represents unity, represents beauty, peace and harmony, represents continuity, represents togetherness. All the good things.”
