{"id":26848,"date":"2022-08-02T10:53:32","date_gmt":"2022-08-02T14:53:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.indianz.com\/News\/?p=26848"},"modified":"2022-08-02T11:01:02","modified_gmt":"2022-08-02T15:01:02","slug":"native-sun-news-today-tim-giago-carved-out-a-lasting-legacy-in-indian-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/2022\/08\/02\/native-sun-news-today-tim-giago-carved-out-a-lasting-legacy-in-indian-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Native Sun News Today: Tim Giago carved out a lasting legacy in Indian Country"},"content":{"rendered":" \"Tim<\/a>
Tim Giago, in his prime, perusing an issue of the Lakota Times, the first Indian owned and operated independent newspaper in the country. Photo portrait by Magis Productions<\/a>, From the book Vision Quest: Men, Women & Sacred Sites of the Sioux Nation<\/a><\/figcaption>\r\n
Giago carved out a lasting legacy<\/div>\r\n
Tuesday, August 2, 2022<\/div>\r\n
By James Giago Davies<\/div>\r\n
Native Sun News Today Managing Editor<\/div>\r\n
nativesunnews.today<\/a><\/div>\r\n

<\/P>\r\nRAPID CITY, South Dakota — Tim Giago wore many hats in his long, eventful life. He was a son, a brother, an uncle, a grandfather, a sailor, a poet, a businessman, an entrepreneur, a talk show host, a journalist, an editor, an author, and a publisher. He was also a stickler for journalistic professionalism, and he would tell writers never to refer to the subjects of a story by anything but their surnames, but it is fitting to break from that maxim, now that his life story has come full circle.\r\n

<\/P>\r\n Tim entered the spirit world on Sunday, July 24, at the age of 88.

<\/P>\r\nTim will be remembered for starting the first Indian owned and operated independent newspaper, the Lakota Times, in 1981; for starting the Native American Journalists Association in 1983; for winning the coveted H.L. Mencken Award in 1985 for his editorial writing, and for shaking hands with the late Governor George Mickelson in 1989 to seal the deal on the Year of Reconciliation, which led to the very first Native American Day in the nation.

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Tim Giago showed no signs of ailment as editor emeritus in May 2022 at his Native Sun News Today office in Rapid City, South Dakota.Giago, Oglala Lakota, die…<\/p>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t

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ICT Video: The legacy of Tim Giago<\/a>\r\n<\/figcaption>\r\n

<\/P>\r\nWhen traditional Lakota introduce themselves they tell you who they are, they tell you where they are from, and they list all their relatives. Tim was born on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1934, the sixth of seven siblings. His father was Tim Giago and his mother was Lupita n\u00e9e Tapio. Both his parents grew up around the town of Kyle, and their surnames were corruptions of the Hispanic surnames Gallego and Tapia. \r\n

<\/P>\r\nIn the 1880\u2019s, Pueblo Indio vaqueros were given land and livestock to settle on the reservation, the intent being they would teach the Oglala to ranch and farm. This attempt was largely unsuccessful but the Pueblo soon became an integral part of the Kyle community, and since Spanish missionaries had long ago stripped them of their own Native culture, they quickly transformed into Oglala. \r\n

<\/P>\r\nBoth of Tim\u2019s parents were trilingual, but they did not pass this on to their children, mostly because of the abiding racism of the day, and as a Spiola, the Lakota word for Hispanic, Tim caught racism from three different directions. \r\n

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The founder of modern Indian journalism has passed on. Tim Giago was 88 years old.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t

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<\/P>\r\nFor the first three decades of his life, because his father\u2019s name was also Tim, Tim was known as Sonny. Sonny left the reservation for Rapid City in 1950. He struggled to fit in at Rapid City High School, was unsure of who he was or what to do with his life, and so joined the Navy. The service years would have a huge impact on his life, as he was exposed to the world at large for the first time, and especially the state of California, where he would eventually relocate. For nearly twenty years, Sonny operated donut shops across the west. He became an expert donut maker and his jelly fills had no rival. \r\n

<\/P>\r\nDuring this time Sonny began to have poems published and he wrote articles for papers, and deeply reconnected with his Lakota roots. He relocated to Rapid City and eventually had a successful business, the Glazed Donut. He was now in his prime, no longer a boy, and so he decided it was time for Sonny to become Tim Giago. Tim appeared on a talk show addressing Native issues in Denver, and thought he could do a similar talk show back in Rapid City. This show ran for several years on KEVN-TV but in the end Tim quit the show, stating, \u201cI will not submit to censorship.\u201d\r\n

<\/P>\r\nAlso at this time, Tim was writing columns for various newspapers. When he asked an editor why he didn\u2019t have Native journalists reporting on Native issues, the editor told him they would be biased. Tim\u2019s response was, you have white reporters reporting on white issues, are they biased? Tim realized the editor did not grasp the irony that he was expressing the very bias he expected from Natives.\r\n

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