In Land of Wounded Knee and 1973 Siege, Tribal Outrage Rises Anew

It’s about pain.

It’s about poverty so stark, the median income falls $20,000 below the national average. And health so poor, life expectancy for men is a bleak 56. And jobs so scarce, unemployment runs above 80%.

It’s about all these problems and more.

But the flash point--the trigger that roused the Oglala Lakota on this desolate reservation to rally Saturday for the second angry week in a row--was beer.

Too much beer, too easily available.

The Lakota long have banned alcohol on their reservation here in southwest South Dakota, a vast and remote territory that spills from shadowy buttes to rolling plains of wildflowers. It’s illegal to sell alcohol here, and it’s illegal as well to bring it here or to drink it here.

But just two miles down the road, across the state line in Nebraska, the tiny unincorporated town of Whiteclay has no such prohibition. Whiteclay, population 22, has four liquor stores lining its one scruffy block. It sells more than 4 million cans of beer a year, according to Native American leaders.

Crumpled cans of Budweiser, Busch and Colt 45 malt liquor litter the road back to Pine Ridge. Car crashes and boozy assaults are all too common along the way--as are drunks bumming money or passed out on the road.

Public intoxication is by far the most common criminal charge on the reservation. And tribal police made more than 1,100 arrests last year for drunken driving--this in a community of just 24,000, where many of the adults do not have cars.

Among sober residents of the reservation, resentment of Whiteclay runs high. When two Pine Ridge men were found dead in a ditch off the main road to Whiteclay last month--murdered, police said, though they have identified no suspects--the simmering frustration exploded.

According to rumor, a Whiteclay businessman or a Nebraska sheriff’s deputy was the killer. And though the FBI offered a $15,000 reward for information, many Lakota believe that detectives are slacking off on the investigation because they don’t care who killed two unemployed Indians on their way home from buying beer.

Outraged over the murders, outraged about beer and outraged too about long-standing claims that the land under Whiteclay should be part of their reservation, Lakota tribal leaders decided that it was time to stand up and shout.

They invited three old firebrands from the American Indian Movement, all veterans of the 1973 standoff with federal officials on the Pine Ridge reservation at Wounded Knee, to lead them.

Setting aside personal spats that had kept them apart for years, Russell Means, Clyde Bellecourt and Dennis Banks--all considered founders of the Native American civil rights movement--converged on the reservation last week to run two “rallies for justice.”

A June 26 march disintegrated into violence when a few dozen protesters--apparently intoxicated--smashed the windows of a Whiteclay grocery store and stole cigarettes, soda and watermelon before setting the building on fire. The outburst frightened Whiteclay merchants, who said that the mounting anger took them by surprise after years of mostly amicable relationships with Native Americans.

“I feel the tension now,” said Tim Hotz, owner of another Whiteclay grocery store. “But I never felt it before.”

Hoping to prevent further trouble, Whiteclay’s 22 residents shuttered their stores and evacuated the town Friday as 100 Nebraska state troopers moved in to block off the area. The officers remained in position Saturday, standing three-deep in full riot gear on the state line to prevent marchers from entering Whiteclay. Means led several Native Americans through the police lines anyway, and he and eight others were promptly arrested. But the hundreds of other marchers retreated to a nearby lawn to chant prayers and sing to the beat of traditional drums.

Their largely peaceful Saturday march was surely passionate. More than 550 Native Americans hiked under a blistering sun, stopping several times along the way to pray.

“There is rage here, America,” Banks shouted at one point to rousing cheers. “Don’t you understand? There is rage here.”

Bellecourt, an imposing man with a long ponytail just starting to gray, added his indignation: “What’s happening in Pine Ridge now is a symbol of what’s happening all over the nation. Somewhere in America, we have to make a stand. We made a stand here in 1973, and we’re making a stand here now.”

He wasn’t just talking about beer.

Indeed, though they called again and again for Whiteclay to shut down all alcohol sales, the beer was for many protesters a stand-in for deeper concerns about the future of their reservation--about the future, in fact, of all Native Americans.

They spoke, with despair, of the scourge of alcoholism, of the hopelessness that comes when only one or two adults in 10 can find work. They spoke of their frustration with law enforcement officials who have not yet tracked down the killers of Ronald Hard Heart and Wilson Black Elk, the two men found decomposing by the roadside.

They spoke too of their anger at feeling ignored. True, President Clinton is scheduled to visit the reservation Wednesday, a trip scheduled long before the rallies, to discuss economic development. But in general, many Lakota complained, Americans seem more concerned about Kosovo than the appalling conditions on reservations in their heartland.

“They just don’t care,” said Eileen Janis, 38.

“Blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians, Jews--their causes all get a lot more attention than ours,” agreed Michael Yellow Bird, an assistant professor in the Native American studies department at the University of Kansas. “It’s very frustrating for indigenous peoples to be ignored in their own homeland. This is our country, after all.”

By bringing back big-name AIM leaders Means, Banks and Bellecourt, Pine Ridge residents said that they hope to give their lagging civil rights movement a new spark.

Or, as Janis put it: “We need to tell the people here that we don’t have to take it anymore.”

During the 71-day standoff at Wounded Knee in 1973, the AIM leadership “talked about self-governance, about how we needed to control our own destiny,” said Roberta Ecoffey, 51. For a time, she recalled, that message held sway at Pine Ridge. People living on the reservation took pride in their heritage, resurrected old traditions like sun dances and sweat lodges and worked hard to make their reservation a better place. But now, the momentum has slipped.

The AIM stalwarts, she said, “needed to be here again.”

The faded little reservation town of Pine Ridge is a jumble of trailers and ranch homes, some with satellite dishes out front, more with clotheslines out back. There’s a Pizza Hut and a Taco John’s, a gas station and, on this July Fourth weekend, several fireworks stands.

But more than its buildings, Pine Ridge is about history. The 1890 massacre by U.S. Army troops of at least 150 Native Americans at nearby Wounded Knee remains a potent symbol of injustice for the American Indian Movement.

There’s triumph here too. Many residents on the reservation trace their ancestry to the great Sioux chiefs Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, who annihilated Lt. Col. George A. Custer and his troops at the battle of the Little Big Horn in Montana in 1876.

But history--even history plus a few feisty rallies--may not be enough to spark the changes so many at Pine Ridge want.

Though they sympathize with the tribe’s concern about alcoholism, Nebraska officials said that they cannot stop Whiteclay from practicing good old-fashioned capitalism. The only way to shut down the liquor stores, they said, would be for Native Americans to stop patronizing them so the market would dry up.

Even if the government could yank the liquor licenses, “you have to ask, what would happen if Whiteclay closed?” asked Nebraska state Sen. Bob Wickersham, who represents the area. “Human behavior being what it is, if you’re addicted to alcohol, you’re going to get it somehow.”

Tribal leaders agreed that closing Whiteclay’s liquor stores would not end alcoholism on the reservation. But they maintained that removing the temptation of cheap beer within walking distance of Pine Ridge would deter many people from daily binges.

And just by calling attention to the issue Saturday, rally organizers said that they had scored a victory.

“Today the world knows our dilemma,” tribal President Harold Salway said. “Today the world knows our poverty and our abuse of alcohol served from Whiteclay. And how it denigrates and destroys our spiritual base.”