The Wounds of Whiteclay: Part 1

Editor’s Note: University of Nebraska-Lincoln professors Joe Starita, Bill Frakes and Rebekka Schlichting worked with nine journalism students to shine a “blazing light on the darkest spot in Nebraska,” according to Starita. The results of that effort – “The Wounds of Whiteclay” — not only played a role in the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission’s decision to revoke liquor licenses in Whiteclay on April 31, but it earned the group the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award on May 1.
We’ve excerpted some highlights of their coverage focusing on the rollercoaster ride that led to the end of alcohol sales in Whiteclay and encourage you to explore all of it at www.woundsofwhiteclay.com.
INTRODUCTION
From www.woundsofwhiteclay.com
The official population of Whiteclay, Nebraska is 12. But thanks to a lucrative liquor trade that’s heavily dependent on customers from the neighboring, alcohol-free Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, there are many more lives at stake in this unincorporated border town.
In the southwestern corner of South Dakota, just off I-90 as it scrapes by the Badlands, there lies a beautiful expanse of rolling prairie, interrupted only by ridges of rugged rock face and pine. This is the Pine Ridge Reservation—home to the Oglala Lakota. As a band of the powerful Lakota tribe, most living on the reservation have storied lineages, some even tracing back to Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and Red Cloud. But the spiritual, nomadic culture of their ancestors is not what exists today. It’s been replaced by injustices, tragedies and sorrows spanning more than a century. Chief among them today is a small, unincorporated village on the other side of the South Dakota-Nebraska border.
Whiteclay, Nebraska. 12 people. Four liquor stores. More than 42 million cans of beer sold in the last 10 years.
It fuels alcoholism that affects nearly every family on a reservation where alcohol is illegal. Here, in the most impoverished county in the United States, it spurs domestic violence, murder, suicide and birth defects that are unprecedented almost anywhere else in the country.
Our mission at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is to give readers a view into this remote area of the country. This project is the product of an in-depth reporting class of 12 students who spent months researching, traveling and editing to bring you these visuals and stories. The places we’ve been span a doublewide trailer where love and sheer will combat the effects of fetal alcohol syndrome, to dawn breaking over the Nebraska Sandhills where a soldier marches toward becoming Nebraska’s first native senator to the streets of Whiteclay filled with lives who’ve lost their way. In telling these stories, showing what we’ve seen, we hope readers understand the full effect of the relationship between Whiteclay and Pine Ridge.
 
COMMISSIONERS TO WHITECLAY: THE TAP HAS RUN DRY
by Chris Bowling
Additional reporting by Lauren Brown-Hulme, Matt Hanson and Vanessa Daves
For 113 years, the booze has flowed freely in the notorious village of Whiteclay, but the end is near: On May 1, the four beer stores in the ramshackle village of seven people could cease to exist.
So decreed a unanimous vote of the Nebraska State Liquor Control Commission at 11:14 a.m. Wednesday—a decision that triggered cheers and tears in a standing-room-only hearing room on the fifth floor of the Nebraska State Office Building. Citing lackluster law enforcement, a deplorable attention to public health and sexual abuse of young girls, the three commissioners voted not to renew the beer store licenses after their April 30 expiration date.
When the decision was announced, Frank LaMere, a Winnebago activist who has fought for 22 years to shut down the four beer stores, began to weep.
“We acted on behalf of those who have no voice,” he said. “And for one day in the history of Nebraska, we gave voice for those who have none.”
 
The Tap Runs Dry
The decision was a dream come true for Sen. Tom Brewer, the first Native state senator in Nebraska history whose district encompasses Whiteclay. After the vote, the Oglala Lakota U.S. Army war veteran-turned-politician gave a jubilant fist pump and broke into a wide smile.
“To hear those words come out of their mouth, you just felt this relief,” he said. “It’s almost like you’ve been sick for a long time and now the fever’s broken and you can see some hope for the future.”
For Judi gaiashkibos, executive director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs, the decision will have a ripple effect. And, she said, it won’t be contained to Native people, or Nebraska, or the United States. It’s international in scope.
“It means that my life matters,” said gaiashkibos, a member of the Ponca tribe. “It means that we don’t have to be invisible. It means that we are being afforded due process. It means that our voice is heard.”