
Notes from Indian Country
Yes Virginia, there is racism in Rapid City
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
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Many citizens of Rapid City including Mayor Steve Allender and his City Council, plus the Editorial Board of the local semi-daily newspaper, appear to be walking around town with a foggy brain when it comes to recognizing the fact that there is more than a semblance of racism in their fair city. Please allow me to point out some hard facts that just might serve as a premise for a racial education that might clear up some of the fog in their brains.
I sometimes hire non-Native journalists from other parts of the country who would like to move to Rapid City and work for a Native American newspaper. And so they arrive here and go out in the City working on local news stories. A couple of weeks into the job we hear them talking at the newspaper office and they are saying, “Gee, I didn’t realize there was so much racism in Rapid City.” Because they are white reporters, the citizens of this city believe it is alright for them to unload their racist comments about Native Americans on them.
A young lady from Sioux Falls moved to Rapid City to stay with her sister. Comments she received from her friends before heading west, “Watch out for the Indians.” Her sister is married to a Lakota man.

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: Column content © Tim Giago
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