Having a good time on the Oprah Winfrey Show

Monday, December 2, 2019  

Suzan Shown Harjo, Muscogee, the former Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians, Michael Haney, Seminole, a leader in the American Indian Movement, and I were seated in the small dining room in a hotel in Chicago waiting for a car to take us to the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Off to the side of the dining room was a small bar. We noticed a guy standing at the bar tossing down shots. We all looked at each other because it was pretty early in the day and we wondered why he was throwing down those drinks.

The car arrived to take us to the Chicago studio where Oprah’s show was taped. The driver came in and led us to the car and then he went back into the hotel and got the man who had been tossing down drinks at the bar. Whoa! The guy was going to be on the same Oprah Show with us. The year was 1991 and this would be the first time in the history of television that Native Americans would be on a national television show to talk about mascots. Apparently the inebriated white guy was going to be our foil.

Oprah was very gracious. We were seated in the so-called green room and she came in and welcomed all of us with a hug. And then it was time to go out into the studio and take a seat in front of her live studio audience.

As she was introducing us a picture of my newspaper, Indian Country Today, appeared on the screen. She talked a little bit about the paper and then went on to introduce Suzan and Michael as well as the inebriated white guy. She didn’t know he had been drinking.

We all had a chance to say a few things about our feelings on Native Americans being used as mascots and we all were pretty adamant about the mascot called “Redskins.” As it turned out the guy with a few drinks too many was from Washington, D.C., and an ardent fan of the Washington Redskins. He had been invited to the show to defend his point of view on the topic.

After each of us said our piece the floor was opened to questions from the studio audience. One questioner said to Suzan that she knew a Native American who did not object to the use of Indians as mascots. To which Suzan replied, “There were also happy campers on the plantations.” The intoxicated white guy then began his rant about Indian women and on topics that had nothing to do with mascots or when he did broach the topic said things that were totally irrelevant. I think even some of the people in the audience were embarrassed for him.

As the show progressed it was obvious that Oprah had never tackled a topic such as mascots and brought on two more guests who only wanted to talk about racism and not about the mascot issue that Michael, Suzan and I had flown half way across the country to discuss.

So, although we didn’t come near to solving the mascot issue, something good did come out of me being on Oprah’s Show. After the show ended Oprah took me, Michael and Suzan aside and apologized to us for having the inebriated man on the show. “If I had known he was drinking I would never had invited him to the show,” she said.

As we left the studio Oprah gave each of us another hug and a coffee cup with her name on it. I still have the coffee mug and the good memories of being on her show. And incidentally, for those who believe I am an AIM hater, just let it be known that Michael Haney and I were the best of friends and later that year I became good friends with Vernon Bellecourt. Sometimes friendship supersedes politics.

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Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota born, raised and educated on the Pine Ridge Reservation and is the founder of the Native American Journalists Association. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard with the Class of 1991. He can be reached at najournalist1@gmail.com

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Content copyright © Tim Giago