Kolby KickingWoman
ICT
A fixture of American television with ties to a tribe in South Dakota sent a shockwave across Indian Country and beyond when news of his August death made it public.
Bob Barker was the face of “The Price is Right” for decades and hosted the show more than 5,000 times. His last was in 2007. He died at the age of 99 at his home in Los Angeles on Aug. 26.
Before taking his talents to California and to the tube, Barker spent a part of his childhood on his homelands on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota. The Rosebud Sioux Tribe confirmed to ICT in an email that he was enrolled.
Many took to social media to share condolences and memories of the icon.
One Native fan, Timothy Huntsinwinter, shared his experience of meeting Barker while in the game show audience years ago. He said Barker was taking questions and he mentioned to the host his Native heritage.
“He told me I was the first audience member to ever ask him about his Lakota side. He talked to me for over five minutes about him being Lakota,” Huntsinwinter posted on Facebook. “He said he took care of the rez dogs and that’s one of the reasons he used to always say spay and neuter your dogs.”
Another person on X, formerly known as Twitter, recalled watching Barker on “The Price Is Right” with their grandparents.
Barker was a longtime animal rights activist who urged his viewers to “have your pets spayed or neutered” at the end of every show and successfully lobbied to ban fur coats as show prizes. He quit the Miss USA Pageant in 1987 in protest over the presentation of fur coats to the winners.
Among his activities on behalf of animals was a $250,000 donation to Save the Chimps, the Fort Pierce, Florida-based organization said in an emailed statement to the Associated Press.
“Bob Barker’s kind spirit lives on at Save the Chimps, where we walk every day on the road named for him after his game-changing contribution,” said Save the Chimps’ CEO Ana Paula Tavares. At the time of the donation, Barker said that he hoped chimpanzees tortured “physically and mentally” for years when being used for research experiments would find “the first peace, contentment and love they have ever known at Save the Chimps.”
KC Rodriguez, Ventureño Chumash, admired Barker for knowing, standing up for and making clear what he believed in.
“That part of him really spoke to my spirit because I’m very active in my Indigenous community in Ventura County for indigenous rights and especially for Chumash and having that clear, very direct kind of knowledge on how to make his stand known very clear to people I admired,” Rodriguez said.
She added that Barker was a role model for her and his career shows what one can accomplish when you believe in yourself and surround yourself with a good support system.
“It just speaks on the volume of having someone believe in you and believe in yourself to accomplish what he accomplished,” Rodriguez said.
CBS said in a statement that daytime television has lost one of its “most iconic stars.
“We lost a beloved member of the CBS family today with the passing of Bob Barker,” the network said, noting that he had “made countless people’s dreams come true and everyone feel like a winner when they were called to ‘come on down.’”
An iconic pop culture moment for Barker was when he beat up Adam Sandler in the 1996 movie, “Happy Gilmore.” In the movie, the two were playing golf together when Sandler got on Barker’s nerves and Barker came out swinging.
“I don’t want a piece of you, I want the whole thing,” Barker said moments before punching Sandler’s character.
Born in Darrington, Washington, in 1923, and moved to South Dakota where his widowed mother had taken a teaching job. The family later moved to Springfield, Mo., where he attended high school. He served in the Navy in World War II.
Barker married Dorothy Jo Gideon, his high school sweetheart; she died in 1981 after 37 years of marriage. They had no children.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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