KELO-Land's all-white TV ads

Native Americans are the invisible consumers out West

By Tim GiagoIn Western South Dakota (on the west side of the Missouri River), for example, Native Americans make up nearly 25 percent of the population. And yet if you stopped here from say Lithuania, and watched the local television stations, you would believe that the entire state population is white.

For example, one television station in Sioux Falls has been promoting its station with a series of advertisement shouting the slogan “This is your home,” and in the ads citizens of KELO-Land are shown going about various activities in their daily lives. The station manager should get out of his or her office and check out the other races of people that call KELO-Land “their home” because all of the citizens in their ads are white.

Long before the first settler gazed upon the waterfalls at Sioux Falls, a city named after the Indian people of the region and the falls, Sioux Falls, as the name of the city indicates, was largely populated by people of the Dakota/Nakota/Lakota, and misnamed as “Sioux.”

This was “their home” and in 2011, and it is still the home to several thousand of their descendants. I do not believe that a television station say in New York City or Chicago would do a similar self-promotional advertisement without including the largest minority factions within its city.Comment:  For commercial makers who get it, see Native Commercial on Super Bowl Sunday and Native Census Ad on Gossip Girl.