A Typical Day in White Clay

Sleeping in roadside camp at 7am

Passed out at 5pm

I wish I could title this post something else, but unfortunately, these photos depict a typical day in White Clay, Nebraska. White Clay is two miles from Pine Ridge, the tribal headquarters of the Oglala Lakota Sioux, and only yards from the border of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. I am working on the construction project for a new justice center for the Oglala Sioux Tribe Department of Public Safety. The dirt road that leads to the project site straddles the Nebraska-South Dakota border. This is what I see each and every day as I leave the construction site - Oglala Lakota Indians passed out in front, and behind, abandoned buildings, in the ditches, and along the short stretch of highway that runs through the one-square mile town. This is where they will sleep off their daily alcohol binge. The lucky ones are the few that have a sleeping bag or a blanket to cover them during the cool summer nights, but blankets will not be enough when winter sets in and the death rate from exposure may escalate.

Throughout the day, Indians stagger drunkenly toward any car that may stop in the tiny town with a population that varies in reports from five to fourteen. The main reason anyone stops in White Clay is to purchase alcohol, for that is the only true commodity this unincorporated town has to offer. Four off-sale liquor stores with metal bars on their windows and doors, sell over four million cans of beer a year, a staggering 12,000 cans of beer per day. Their customers? Residents of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation or the bootleggers who prey on the addicted, loading their cars with cases of beer to sell on the dry reservation.

Drinking away the day

The possession and sale of alcohol has been prohibited under Oglala Sioux tribal law since the early 1890s. This law was reversed in 1970, but the legalization of alcohol sales was short-lived. An outcry from Oglala traditionalists resulted in the new law being immediately repealed. Liquor is not part of the Lakota culture. It is a poison that was introduced by white men to weaken, disorientate, and make the Lakota warriors vulnerable - only one of the techniques Europeans used to attempt to destroy the Lakota people and their way of life. The liquor store owners in White Clay, Nebraska care nothing about tradition and the human lives they are ruining; turning a deaf ear to the protests from the Oglala people and listening only to the ring of their busy cash registers.

Today, the Lakota women of the Oglala Sioux tribe are protesting the sale of alcohol in White Clay. Members and allies of the Women's Day of Peace march will walk from Pine Ridge to White Clay, and I hope it will be just that—a peaceful demonstration against the town that profits from the misery of many.