18 Facts About Tim Giago

In 1981, he founded the Lakota Times with Doris Giago at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where he was born and grew up.

In 1991 Giago was selected as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

Tim Giago founded the Native American Journalists Association and served as its first president.

When hired in 1979 to write a column for the Rapid City Journal, Tim Giago was the first Native American writer for a South Dakota newspaper.

Tim Giago, whose Lakota name was Nanwica Kciji, was born on July 12,1934, and grew up at the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Tim Giago later wrote poetry and articles about the anger he felt at having his Lakota identity and culture suppressed.

Tim Giago attended San Jose Junior College in California and the University of Nevada, Reno.

Tim Giago served with the US Navy at the San Francisco Naval Shipyard, where he started writing because his commander noticed "he typed well" and assigned him to produce the base newspaper.

Tim Giago wrote personal articles and poems about his mission school experience, first published in the monthly journal Wassaja, run by Jeannette and Rupert Costo of San Francisco during the 1970s.

In 1981, Giago moved back to the reservation to begin the Lakota Times with Doris Giago as a weekly community newspaper to represent his neighbors' lives.

Tim Giago wrote editorials criticizing US and state policy related to Native Americans, and his columns were soon syndicated by Knight-Ridder.

Tim Giago founded the Native American Journalists Association and served as its first president.

Gradually Tim Giago expanded his paper's coverage to all the Indian reservations in South Dakota, then to American Indian issues nationwide.

In 1998, Tim Giago sold the paper to the Oneida Nation, based in New York.

In 2000, Giago founded The Lakota Times and sold it in 2004 to the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe, thinking he would retire.

Tim Giago was a columnist for the Huffington Post, an online news source.

Tim Giago became the first Indian journalism professor at South Dakota State University and the first tenured Native American Professor in SDSU history.

Tim Giago died from complications of cancer and diabetes in Rapid City, South Dakota, on July 24,2022, aged 88.