Tim Giago: Fighting for justice the only way he knows

Monday, September 10, 2018  

Fighting for justice the only way he knows
The case of Colin Kaepernick
By Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji – Stands Up For Them)

The national rage, fueled by Donald S. Trump, about African American football players and others taking a knee during the playing of the National Anthem has gone from the ridiculous to the sublime.

Let’s take a non-hysterical look at it. Trump has called those who take a knee “sons of bitches” and in so doing, not only hurled insults at the players, but their mothers. Their mothers are bitches? Give me a break.

It all started when an NFL Quarterback named Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the playing of the National Anthem to protest police violence against the Black youth of America. This was not a figment of Kaepernick’s imagination. Nearly every day one could pick up a newspaper or turn on the television news and read or hear about another unarmed Black youth gunned down by a police officer. Kaepernick decided that this was too much and he wanted to do something to bring attention to this horrendous situation.

There is a saying that Rosa Parks was not protesting the bus when she refused to be seated in the back, but she was protesting a stupid city ordinance that demanded that Black people be seated in the back of the bus. She was protesting the racism behind this ordinance.

Kaepernick was not protesting the American flag: He was protesting the racism that should not be allowed in American under the guise of the flag. The flag after all is merely a symbol of this country.

When the South fought in the Civil War against the United States they destroyed all of the American flags and created their own Confederate flag. Remember that?

The only other inhabitants of North America that ever went to war against America was the American Indians. What do you suppose happened to the American flag and the flag of the Seventh Cavalry when Custer was soundly defeated at the Greasy Grass in Montana? The American flag and Custer’s cavalry flag were taken by the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Lakota as symbols of their victory.

There are those who say that American veterans are insulted by the NFL players taking a knee to protest racism. Are we? I for one am not. I served two tours of duty in Korea during the war there; in 1952 and 1953. I have the South Korean Presidential Unit Citation and two stars on my Korean Combat ribbon. I am proud to have served in defense of America, but I served in hopes of bringing better conditions to this country and for the rights of every American to protest against injustice.

I recall when many Native Americans refused to stand for the National Anthem in the 1980s at the Lakota Nation Invitational Basketball Tournament in Rapid City. Were they ignored by the national media because the media felt that Indians had every right to protest and African Americans did not?

Like many Lakota I am a witness to the injustices perpetrated upon the Native Americans. I was born the year the Indian Reorganization Act took away the traditional form of government from the Indian Nations in 1934. I have been witness to many other acts including the efforts of the Lakota people to regain some of the lands stolen from them when the Black Hills were appropriated by the United States without just compensation or just consideration for the rights of the Lakota. Since them millions of dollars in gold, timber and other natural resources have been stripped from those Hills without a single penny going to the people who still are among the poorest of Americans. I have not been a silent witness, nor will I ever be.

As Voltaire supposedly said in 1770, "I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Many of the freedoms so many of my fellow veterans and I fought to preserve are now under attack as never before. We now live in a land where there are “alternate facts” and “Truth is not truth.” As a member of the media I, like all of the media, is under attack as providers of “Fake News.” The flag that so many people are wrongly defending is fast losing the reason it flew over the Nation’s capital for generations: Truth and justice; the very reason so many of us pursued a career in journalism.

Colin Kaepernick did what he thought was best for his people; for his cause without regard to the consequences because what he did he believed was the right thing to do. Many years ago I wrote about the media in South Dakota when it was called the Mississippi of the North by American Indians. I wrote, “South Dakota’s media is like the proverbial mule; you have to hit it between the eyes with a two-by-four to get its attention.” The South Dakota media castigated me for saying that, but I was merely reflecting what I saw as the conditions of South Dakota at the time.

We should not question what Kaepernick is doing; but why he is doing it. And I for one, defend his right to do it.

Contact Tim Giago at najournalist1@gmail.com

Copyright permission Native Sun News Today