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along the way.
• She and her fellow mentors are trying to change the attitude of hopelessness one musician at a time.
• Participants are selected through an audition process, and workshops are held over a two-month period with performances planned all over the reservation. The program gives them a chance to record an album at KILI, a radio station for the Pine Ridge, Cheyenne River and Rosebud reservations. As a requirement to audition, participants must write a song to record.
• The first year, 16 people were selected for the program, but that number dwindled to eight once they realized what all was involved, Little Spotted Horse said.
• "I don't think they realized how much work really went into being a working musician. I think they just thought it was what they see on TV," she added. During the most recent year, four youth were selected for the Independence Through Music program.
• Little Spotted Horse begins the training by talking honestly about what it takes to be a professional musician.
• "Being a musician is not a hobby. It can be ... there's a difference between really wanting to be a musician and just liking to play music every once in a while," said Little Spotted Horse, 38.
• Image comes next. Little Spotted Horse and the mentors explain the importance of finding a genre and niche and how to create their own press kit. After that, it's perfecting the stage presence through acting exercises and learning to let go of self-consciousness. That's the part that can be difficult for many of the youth, she said.
• "As Native kids we're taught to be docile, to be respectful, quiet," she said. One student, in fact, had never screamed before, so Little Spotted Horse gave her a pillow, everyone left the room and the student screamed into the pillow.
• A mock tour comes last in which students learn how to set up hotels and budget for food and gas.
• Tracy Bone and her husband J.C. Campbell, who are based in Winnipeg, Canada, travel to Pine Ridge several times a year to take part in the mentorship in hopes of creating a music community on the reservation.
• The hope is that the youth dream bigger and know there are people to help support them as they work to become professional artists, said Bone, a member of the Keeseekoowenin Ojibway First Nation.
• Kristen Hunter, 23, is one of the young musicians getting that support thanks to Independence Through Music.
• Hunter, who started singing at the age of 4, is recording a country album.

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