Tim Giago, Native American Newspaperman, Is Dead at 88

Tim Giago, the outspoken founder of the first independently owned Native American newspaper in the United States, who challenged discriminatory government policies, American Indian stereotypes in popular culture and, at times, tribal leaders themselves, died on Sunday in Rapid City, S.D. He was 88.

The cause was complications of cancer and diabetes, Doris Giago, his first wife, said.

When he started as a local reporter for The Rapid City Journal in 1980, Mr. Giago was frustrated that he was rarely allowed to write about life on the reservation.

“One editor told me that I would not be able to be objective in my reporting,” he recalled in a 2005 essay for the newsletter of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, where he was a fellow in 1991. “I replied, ‘All of your reporters are white. Are they objective when covering the white community?’”

To him, such attitudes were part of a larger problem: dismissive, and often skewed, coverage of Native American issues in the mainstream news media.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/28/us/tim-giago-dead.html