Since 1492 the history of the Western Hemisphere has been marked by one of the greatest holocausts in the history of the world.

There are no true figures to quote about how many millions of indigenous people have perished in this land that was once their own. Those who...

A man dressed in black and silver approached me at a newspaper convention in San Francisco 30 years ago. He held out his hand and said, "Hi, Tim; I'm Al Neuharth and I also am from South Dakota."

That was the first time I met the man...

We all, eventually, reach that point in our lives when it is time to move on.

For more than 30 years I have spent each Sunday morning listening to National Public Radio with a piping cup of coffee at hand while I racked my brain to turn...

Perhaps there are many people in America who do not know of the three great Native Americans I am about to eulogize, but all three passed away within two weeks of each other, and all three were champions for Indian rights all of their lives.

Wayne L. Ducheneaux was an...

In a couple of weeks flyers will be strewn across the Pine Ridge Reservation asking the residents to honor the "Liberation of Wounded Knee in February of 1973." Those who would celebrate and hand out flyers have a delusional recollection of the past.

Wounded Knee was a small village...

When measuring incompetence in the federal government where does one begin?

An excellent starting point is with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The acronym BIA is as familiar to Native Americans as FBI is to all Americans. Both Bureaus have had their faults, but the evidence making the BIA...

It was just six days after the horrible massacre of nearly 300 Lakota men, women and children at Wounded Knee and the news was spreading not only across the nation, but to the small communities in Western South Dakota. December 29, 1890 was to become a day of infamy to...

It started out in 1977 as a tournament to bring American Indian teams together and prepare them for the long season ahead. It has gone where no one alive today ever thought it would go.

When the Lakota people hear the acronym "LNI" they know exactly what it means. It...

While trying to talk about the tragedy at Newtown, Connecticut last week it was said over and over by different individuals, "There are no words to describe it."

It wasn't a tragedy that resonated in only one small community in New England, but it was a horrific happening that spread...

Can the government refuse marriage and federal benefits to gays and lesbians? Those are the questions before the U.S. Supreme Court, which should make a ruling in June 2013.

In the New York case the survivor of a same-sex marriage is challenging the justices to decide whether the federal government...

Native Americans fit nicely into that media box labeled "Out of sight; out of mind:" And if not out of sight, then badly portrayed.

At Thanksgiving white and black school children sporting cardboard headbands and feathers whoop and holler like "wild Indians" around their classroom desks. This past Thanksgiving I...

Thankfully we will have a slight respite of two years before the mid-term elections roll around.

It is time for all Native Americans to scrutinize their political affiliations. Have the Democrats or the Republicans fulfilled your political aspirations? Has either Party stood up for your interests?

My answer to...

A famous columnist once wrote, "It is easy to write a weekly column. All you have to do is sit in front of your typewriter until you sweat blood."

Of course the typewriter has long since been replaced by the computer, but that concept of writing a...

One day I was scheduled to go into surgery at the Rapid City Eye Institute for a detached retina and while I was on the gurney hooked up to monitors, the nurse attending me called a physician and he studied the heart monitor and suddenly stopped the tests and disconnected...

I have a friend who suffers from that age-old illness known as Demo-nesia. He has been immersed in the pit of the demagoguery of the Democratic Party for so long that his mind has been literally boggled.

I fully expected to get some very negative responses on the column I...

I've never met Matt Varilek, the Democrat running against incumbent Kristi Noem (R-SD) for the lone Congressional seat in South Dakota. However, I have talked to him on the phone and I will get into that conversation later in this column.

I have met Representative Kristi Noem, first at...

Melvin "Dickie" Brewer, a classmate of mine at the Holy Rosary Indian Mission on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and a lifelong friend, like so many Indian boys and girls faced with the hardships of growing up in poverty, developed a drinking problem.

It became a little more...

October 8 is Native American Day in South Dakota, the only state in the Union that honors Native Americans with a state sanctioned holiday: A holiday that, in fact, replaces Columbus Day.

Many Native Americans went to bat to cause this to happen. The primary motivator was the 100th anniversary...

We didn't know where she came from because in the 1940s many of the nuns and priests at Holy Rosary Indian Mission on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota came from a foreign country.

Her name, unfortunately for her, was Sister Ivo. Yeah, you guessed it: the Lakota boys...

Twenty years ago I was on the Oprah Winfrey Show with Michael Haney and Suzanne Harjo to talk about the use of Native Americans as mascots for America's fun and games.

It was the first time in television history that a major talk show allowed Native Americans...