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Tim Giago writes a syndicated column.Courtesy photo

Highest Honor

By Megan Gordon

VERMILLION, S.D.-Tim Giago will become the first Native American to be inducted into the South Dakota Newspaper Hall of Fame at South Dakota State University on Saturday.

Giago, an Oglala Lakota from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, has traveled a long way from his roots to pursue his journalism career.

He will be one of four honorees at the induction. The others being honored are Ralph Nachtigal, Wayne Bertrand and Gordon Garnos, all former publishers and editors at South Dakota newspapers.

"Tim Giago was a strong representation of the Native American community as a strong journalism and newspaper publisher," said Keith Jensen, a Hall of Fame selection committee member. "His credentials speak for themselves."

Among Giago's accomplishments are founding the Lakota Times and the Native American Journalists Association and serving as NAJA's first president.

Giago later changed the name of Lakota Times to Indian Country Today. He was editor and publisher of the paper for 18 years before selling it in 1998. Then he founded the Lakota Journal in 2000 and served as its editor and publisher until his retirement in 2004. He continues to write a nationally syndicated weekly column, "Notes From Indian Country," distributed by McClatchy News Service.

In 1991, he was awarded a prestigious fellowship by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, the oldest mid-career program for active journalists.

‘Total Awe'

"I'm in total awe of what he's accomplished and his great love for his people," said Gene Thin Elk, director of the Native American Cultural Center at the University of South Dakota. "One of the greatest things he could do is give them a voice. He's given them a form to articulate that. That's powerful. He's really brought the First Amendment to the Native people."

In 1990, Giago wrote a column challenging Republican Gov. George S. Mickelson of South Dakota to support legislation declaring that Columbus Day should be Native American Day. The column was read on the floor of the state Legislature, whose members made South Dakota the first state to celebrate Native American Day as a state holiday.

Born in 1934, Giago grew up with five sisters and a brother, and all attended boarding school at Holy Rosary Indian Mission near Pine Ridge.

When he was 17, he joined the U.S. Navy and fought in the Korean War during part of his seven years in the service. Before his discharge, Giago was stationed in San Francisco where journalism first sparked his interest.

"I became editor of the base newspaper simply because I knew how to type," Giago said. "It was really my introduction to journalism."

Breaking the Norm

After earning a degree in business and minoring in journalism at the University of Nevada at Reno, Giago returned home to start his career. In 1981, he founded the Times.

"We took on issues that the state non-Indian media wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole," he said. "We broke the norm, but it wasn't easy."

During the newspaper's infancy, Giago received many death threats directed at him and his family, he said.

"My windshield was shot out in my face once," he said. "Anything worth doing is going to have certain risks. ... I slept with a rifle next to my bed. When I went to work, I had a shotgun next to my desk."

Giago said many of the threats came from his own people who did not like what he was writing because he spoke out against violence on the Pine Ridge Reservation and did not "hesitate to name names." Eventually, many people came around, he said.

"It took a great tribal leader to bring all the violence to an end," he said. "[Tribal President] Joe American Horse told the committee, ‘From now on, if there is any attack on the Lakota Times, I'm going to consider it an attack against the people.' "

Even during the hard times, Giago said, he knew journalism was what he wanted to do.

"It gives you an opportunity to challenge things," he said. "I grew up in an era of very strong discrimination. We used the [Lakota Times] to address issues like that."

Giago said he is honored to be the first Native inducted into the Hall of Fame. "I'm breaking the ice," he said. "By opening that door, it will allow other Native Americans into it."

Megan Gordon, Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, attends the University of South Dakota in Vermillion and is a 2006 graduate of the Freedom Forum's American Indian Journalism Institute. Last summer, Gordon interned as a reporter at the Des Moines Register under the Freedom Forum's Chips Quinn Scholars Program.

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