Indianz.Com > News > Tim Giago: We are human beings and not mascots for America’s fun and games
Notes from Indian Country
We are human beings and not mascots for America’s fun and games
Friday, October 23, 2020
One of the first, if not the only, sports newscaster who decided not to use the word “Redskin” in his nightly newscast worked for KOTA-TV in Rapid City and his name was Bob Laskowski.
Bob was having lunch one day many years ago in the Big Boy Restaurant in Mitchell when I, then publisher of the Lakota Times, walked in the door on my way back from Brookings. I joined Bob and we talked about the use of Indians as mascots for America’s fun and games for more than an hour. Bob thought about all he had heard from me that day and when he got back to Rapid City he decided he would not say “Redskins” anymore, but would simply say the NFL team from Washington.
No other sports caster or newspaper in the entire state of South Dakota caught on to Bob’s noble gesture and they continue to this day to use the offensive “Redskin” word in their newspapers, radio and television sports reports.
I often used analogies to make my point. For example I would ask, “What if a white man walked into a room filled with Lakota men and said ‘How are all you redskins doing?’” I also spoke out against the use of the word “squaw” to describe an Indian woman. I once wrote, “If you think Indian women do not object to the word squaw walk up to an Indian woman sometime and say ‘hello, squaw’ and see if you don’t get your face slapped.”
I wrote my first column about mascots in 1982 and along with Suzan Harjo and Michael Haney, I appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show to talk about mascots particularly the use of the word “Redskin.” That was in 1992. It was the first time Indian mascots had been discussed on a national television show.
My dander about mascots was raised when I saw a game on national television with the Washington team. At half time they chased a pig painted red with a headband stuffed with feathers out on the field. I wrote, “What if they had taken a pig and painted it black and stuck an Afro wig on its head?”
Tim Giago, Publisher of Native Sun News Today, can be reached at editor@nsweekly.com. Tim was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard with the Class of 1991. He wrote this article several years ago and decided it was time to bring it forward again at this time
Note: Content © Tim Giago
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