Notes from Indian Country: Some good old days really were ‘good old days’

It was around midnight when I heard the knock on my office door at the old Lakota Times office on the Main Street in Pine Ridge Village in 1981. The newspaper was located in the old Western Auto Store that used to be operated by Eugene Rooks. We rented from him after our newspaper office across the street at the old beauty shop had its windows blown out.

It was a basketball night and I had just returned to the office to write my story and check my film for the Red Cloud High School game I had just covered. On these nights, as on many nights, I worked very late at the newspaper since at the time, we were in our early stages of publishing, I also did all of the writing, photography, paste up and delivering.

Since our windows had been shot out more than once and we had also been firebombed I was pretty cautious when I peeked through the curtain covering the front door to see who was knocking at my office door at this ungodly hour.

It was Louie Bad Wound. He, along with Larry Red Shirt were activists that had even traveled to New York City to appear at the United Nations fighting for the rights of the Lakota people. They were strong representatives of the Lakota Treaty Council. They sometimes stopped at my office at night whenever they saw my lights on because they knew I always had a hot pot of coffee on.

Whenever they stopped by they wanted to talk about the reservation and about the tribal government, their struggles with the federal government, the poor treatment our people were getting at the Indian Health Service Hospital and about some of the things they were trying to accomplish on a national and international level in getting our treaties upheld.

When I think about some of the terrible things happening at the reservation hospitals today I think to myself, my god, we wrote about these things 35 years ago. The more things change the more they stay the same.

However, I always ended up getting a good story for the newspaper by the time they headed back into the night. They were never angry; just concerned about the future of their people.

Larry Red Shirt and Louie Bad Wound are dead now and I only have photos to remember them by, but I often think about how they both worked so hard and sacrificed everything in search of justice for the Lakota.

When I was asked to be a consultant for Producer David Wolper on an ABC Series called “The Mystic Warrior” I immediately went to Louie with the script in order to get his spiritual and traditional opinions so that there would be no boneheaded errors made while depicting the Lakota people. Louie later traveled with me to Hollywood to meet Mr. Wolper and Stan Margulies and to watch some of the scenes being filmed and to offer his advice. Wolper and Margulies had just aired the ABC Special that became a national hit called “Roots.” Later two gentlemen from Pine Ridge; Mike Her Many Horses and Joe American Horse came to LA with me to help with the film.

The film was previewed in Rapid City at the Elks Theater and Margulies served a free lunch at the Alex Johnson Hotel across the street from the theater for as many people from the Pine Ridge Reservation as he could pack into the movie. It didn’t turn out to be an American Indian “Roots” but all of the Lakota in attendance that day enjoyed it. I remember Lyman Red Cloud, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council, coming out of the theater after the movie and finding Margulies to shake his hand. Since the movie was a two-part television series Margulies showed one half of it, gave the audience an intermission and lunch, and then showed them the rest of the show.

And of course Louie Bad Wound, Mike Her Many Horses and Joe American Horse, who was serving as the President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, were all in attendance.

That night I took Margulies to the Crazy Horse Memorial for dinner with the Ziolkowski family, Ruth and Korczak, and their 11 children. The kids were dying to meet Margulies because they loved his movie “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” Korczak died the next year and Ruth passed on last year.

Today I was thinking about my old friend Wilbur Between Lodges, another former President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, who passed away a few months ago and I remember him at the luncheon and movie at the Elks Theater and that prompted all of the memories that went into making that day such a wonderful memory. It’s funny how thinking about one person can bring back a flood of memories about many.

– Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, is the retired publisher of several Native American newspapers and the 1985 winner of the H.L. Mencken Award for editorial writing. Reach him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.