"I have something in common with the great concert pianist and virtuoso, Van Cliburn. He won a piano competition in Texas when he was 12 years old. That same year I failed miserably in my efforts to play �Chopsticks� on an aging piano at Holy Rosary Indian Mission on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

So what do we have in common? We were both born in the wee hours of July 12, 1934. This week we both turned 72 years of age. I doubt very seriously if Van Cliburn knows about me, but by virtue of our birth dates I have followed his illustrious career from its outset.

We were born the year of the Indian Reconciliation Act of 1934. This was an Act of Congress to allow Indian tribes to establish a Constitution and to hold free elections in a lesson in self-government. Of course, most tribes practiced a form of democratic rule long before 1934 and long before they received Congressional approval to do what they had always done.

Many tribal elders referred to the IRA governments as �New Deal governments� and some of the tribes such as the Navajo Nation, refused to endorse the Act. My tribe, the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) ratified the Act in July of 1934. I don�t suppose Van Cliburn showed much interest in this piece of legislation that changed the complexion of Indian country forever.

We were born on the cusp of the Great Depression and Great Dust Bowl of the 1930s. We rode in Model A Fords and saw the airplane go from a two-winged fence jumper to powerful jets that could fly three times the speed of sound. We witnessed the mushroom clouds that darkened the skies over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

While Van Cliburn was winning piano concert awards in Texas in the 1940s, I was playing war games and cursing Adolph Hitler and Tojo with my boyhood friends at the Indian mission boarding school on the reservation.

He was 17 when he entered Julliard, a school for outstanding performers, and I was 17 when I enlisted in the United States Navy. While Van Cliburn was sniffing the perfumed air of Carnegie Hall, I was freezing in the winter and swatting flies the size of hummingbirds in Korea."

Get the Story:
Tim Giago: Sharing a birthday beyond the seventh decade (The Native American Times 7/10)

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