As a Native journalist, I’ve watched the sparring between two other Native journalists, both from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The latest column is written by Chuck Trimble, a Lakota journalists, who has recently taken issue with Tim Giago, another Lakota newsman. Read Trimble’s latest column about the importance of morals and ethics and fact checking in journalism.
Trimble, who was recently here in Missoula, Mont., raised similar questions in speech at the University of Montana. Meanwhile, here’s an excerpt from his latest column:
“As a journalist I cannot be silent about experienced and respected colleagues who abuse the power of the press for self-aggrandizement or retribution. Journalists should not tolerate colleagues who show total disregard for accuracy, facts and truth in writing for publication…Accordingly, I feel I must criticize a recent column by Tim Giago in which he presents inaccuracies and untruths. Aside from the issues of fact and truth and ethics, this issue is of very personal meaning to me.
Giago recently published a column which was apparently meant to help justify the crusade he announced as the reason for his getting back into the newspaper publishing business – that of riding herd on tribal governments to keep them from ‘running roughshod over their citizens…’
Jodi Rave
Bob
Jodi, to be fair why not put Tim’s response on this site. Seems fair to me as I don’t really care about their politics, as I am interested in getting the truth out about boarding schools and the treatment of Indians. Seems Tim is about that on his site very consistently. Thanks Bob
Jodi Rave
I haven’t seen his response. Where is it?
Chuck Trimble
Bob has brought out precisely what my argument with Tim Giago is all about. He is very careless in making assertions, and especially in telling about his misery at the Holy Rosary Mission Indian baording school, which I attended for 12 years, and with Giago for a few of those years he was there.
Here’s an example: In a barb at the mission in an April 1996 column, Giago explained why he had mixed feelings about the fire that destroyed the old historic church at the school. Although he appreciated the church’s resplendent Lakota designs, he wrote, it was tainted by its history of being built for forced child labor:
He wrote, “The red bricks used to construct the church and the buildings attached to it were made, under the supervision of the (Jesuit) brothers, by the Indian children attending the mission school. My grandmother Sophie Abeita was one of the students used as child labor to make those red bricks.â€
However, at the time the school was being built there were no students, and wouldn’t be any until the school opened several months after its completion. This is according to old records in the Catholic Mission archives at Marquette University. And the same records show that Sophia Abeita was born in 1871, which would have made her 27 when the church was built in 1898 — hardly a “child laborer,†even if child labor was used (which records show was not the case). The bricks were formed and placed on heavy metal sheets for firing in large kilns, and the buildings required an estimated half million of them in their construction. This was obviously not a job for “child labor.â€
These things are obviously written to hurt the mission school, which Giago might have reason to feel justified in doing. But in doing so, he is twisting history. Once a lie or inaccuracy is published in periodicals and books, it becomes history and the damage is done. And there are examples galore of his lies, some over the pettiest things.
That is what my problem is with Mr. Giago. Pure and simple.