Tim Giago: Cancer is claiming far too many lives on Pine Ridge


She was 47; a week later she went on journey.

The ‘Big C’ is claiming too many of my old friends
By Tim Giago
Native Sun News
nsweekly.com

One usually does not use the first person “I” when writing an editorial, but what I have to say is personal so I will make an exception in this case.

Because I have climbed the hill of life and now I am nearing the top I started to make arrangements for my funeral and wake. One of my lifelong friends, Wilbur Between Lodges, had written a song for me called Nanwica Kciji (My Lakota name) with his drum group from Wanbli in 1984 and they sang it on a couple of occasions when I spoke or was honored. I asked Wilbur if he would sing my song at my wake. He said, “Of course.”

But life and death doesn’t always go as planned. One day several months ago, Wilbur came to visit me at my office. He wanted to speak privately and when we sat down to talk he told me he had cancer in his lungs and he was fighting it. “I’m going to beat it, Tim,” he said. As brave and as strong as he was, this was one battle he was going to lose. He died shortly after his visit with me.

It made me think about a call I got several years ago from my cousin G. Wayne Tapio, the mayor and Mr. Everything for Pine Ridge Village. We called him Sague (means Cane in Lakota) when he was in school with me at the Holy Rosary Indian Mission. Then it was Waynie and finally just G. Wayne. He said, “Timmy (he always called me that) I have the “Big C” in my throat and it is serious, but I am going to beat it.” Well, he fought it with all of his energy, but he lost.

One Christmas in about 1981, G. Wayne stopped by my newspaper and said he had found a town in Massachusetts willing to donate an entire truckload of Christmas decorations for Pine Ridge Village. He asked me if I could help him find a way to get it from there to here. My good friend Tom Loomis, who would later start the Arrow Factory at Wanbli, found a truck and the Christmas decorations showed up a week later just in time to make Pine Ridge Village one of the most beautifully decorated towns in the United States. That was G. Wayne, always thinking ahead about how to improve life for the people he loved.

Several years ago I ran into another cousin of mine, Leo Vocu. Leo had been the Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians in Washington, D.C. in the early 1970s. He had fought for the rights of the Indian people for many years. He told me that he had been diagnosed with cancer. He was in his early 70’s and came from a family with long lives. His mom, my aunt Lucy Vocu, lived to be 97. His uncle Tim, my dad, lived to be 95. But they never developed the cancer that soon ended his life.

Mike Giago, my brother in the Lakota way, a veteran of Vietnam, called me from the VA Hospital at Fort Meade and like the others he told me he had cancer and he was going to beat it. Two weeks later he was dead. One day years ago I came across a business plan put together by Mike when he worked at the Planning Center in Pine Ridge Village. As I read through it I could not help but marvel at the intelligent way it was organized. I thought to myself at the time, “Mike is a pretty brilliant guy.”

Again, a few years ago, I was at the Federal Court House in Rapid City on business when I spotted Gerald “Plum” Clifford, another schoolmate from Holy Rosary, sitting on the passenger side of a pickup truck. I knocked on the window and as we chatted he told me that he had cancer and was in a pretty bad way.

“Plum” was another of the brilliant guys from Pine Ridge. He was the youngest guy every to graduate from the School of Mines & Technology in Rapid City in the school’s history. His consulting firm ACKO, Inc. provided many services to help the Indian people over the years. Well, as happened to all of the guys I am writing about today, Gerald passed away.

I began to wonder what it was on the Pine Ridge Reservation that caused all of these wonderful people to come down with cancer and die so young. It seems that the “Big C” as G. Wayne called it, is taking a lot of lives on my home reservation and it continues to this day. Maybe the much maligned Indian Health Service should make a study of it. My old friends all fought and believed they could beat cancer, but I guess nobody can beat death.

Anyhow, these great guys I knew and grew up with have all made that Journey to the Spirit World in a way that was never a part of their life’s plans. I missed them then and I miss them now. And I am looking for another drum group to sing at my wake.

It is also ironic that yesterday when my wife Jackie was cleaning out a closet she found the original cassette by Between Lodges and the Eagle Nest Singers with my song on it. It had been hidden away for more than 30 years.


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(Tim Giago, Nanwica Kciji) can be reached at unitysodak1@vastbb.net)

Copyright permission Native Sun News

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