No one is forced to drink alcohol. It's a choice we all have. Many of us can take it our leave it.
But sometimes things aren't always so black and white.
A friend recently told me that the West wasn't won by guns, but with alcohol. Today those living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota continue to be threatened with white lightning from White Clay, NE.
And Indian activists are mad! Can the rest of us stand with them?
I'm of a privileged class. I'm of European descent.
I grew up in Iowa, a descendant of farmers who benefited from the Homestead Act. All my ancestors had to do in order to become owners of 640 acres (one square mile) or more was to stake it, live on it and start working the land.
My great grandfather came over from Germany where land was getting scarce. Over here the land was in abundance. The only folks who walked on it were the natives. We called them Indians, because our ancestors couldn't tell the original residents of this land from the people who lived in the East, India.
So today, our "Indians" live on reservations. The nation that may have once hunted on the land that my grandfather took over was probably the Sioux. The most Western band of the Sioux are the people who call themselves the Lakota, who live on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
Just a mile or so south of the Pine Ridge Reservation is the northern boundary of Nebraska. I also had relatives on my mom's side of the family who also lived very close to the small Nebraska towns close to the northern border. They had learned to live with, and in most instances, benefit from the Indians who were their neighbors.
Not long ago I met a Lakota who visited my fair city. He informed a small group of us about the continued threat his people still have to contend with from us people of European descent who live near their reservation.
Pine Ridge is alcohol-free. No one is allowed to consume alcohol of any kind on the reservation. Many of us know that we introduced Indians to alcohol when we started trading with them centuries ago. One older man I know, who happens to be a priest, claims that we Europeans didn't win the West with guns. No, we won the West from the Indians with alcohol. Many of our ancestors wanted to completely exterminate the natives of this country back then. And today, some of us are still working at it, still with the alcohol.
In the case of the Pine Ridge Reservation and Nebraska, especially in White Clay, NE, some of us White folk are doing a pretty darn effective job of extermination.
Duane Martin or the Lakota Nation tells us that few adults are reaching old age on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Alcoholism takes their lives in mid-age. Children are left without parents. They are forced to grow up too soon, and many turn to malt liquor in White Clay to drown their sorrow like those before them.
I asked Martin if there could be a more systemic problem that is causing his people to turn to alcohol. Have we Whites taken too much of their culture away? Have we also forced them to quit eating their native foods, replacing it with food that their ancestors would have refused?
Although he didn't disagree, he noted that the fact that White Clay exists mainly to sell alcohol to Indians, first priority must be shutting down these beer joints so the nation can begin to stop this epidemic that is like a genocide against his people at this time.
These four beer establishments sell more than $4 million in beer, mostly to the Lakota people, annually. The Indians are dying on the deserted streets of White Clay. They are not allowed to drink in the reservation. Nebraska law says they can't drink on the streets in White Clay or on the premises of the beer establishments, but hardly any beer joint owners are shut down although they continue to allow the buyers to consume the alcohol on their premises. They also continue to sell the beer and malt liquor to anyone who wants to buy it, even if they are noticeably drunk already.
People who care about what is happening to the Lakota people have tried to get local beverage boards to deny permits, to take away permits, to legislate from Lincoln, to move the beer joints much further away from the reservations, but the business is just too good to move. Thus everyday is business as usual.
Indians and progressive whites have participated in direct action and civil disobedience to draw attention to this genocide that is taking its slow and methodical toll on this once powerful Indian nation.
Some would say that drinking is a personal choice. No one forces an Indian to take a drink. Some would say that Indians are not any more prone to drink than is an Irishman, for example.
But where are the drug treatment centers or the rehabilitation centers in White Clay. Merchants there pay nearly $500,000 a year in taxes and fees from their alcohol sales. Yet this area where the four beer joints operate looks like something from a war zone. All it is are beer joints. No schools. No parks. Just places to sell beer to Indians.
If a white neighborhood had to deal with this, they would be listened to. Elected leaders in their community would at last get the message and would find some way to deal with this problem. But this doesn't seem to be happening in the White Clay or Pine Ridge Reservation.
Our neighbors in the Midwest deserve to be treated better than they are by us descendants of those who took their hunting grounds from them some hundred of years ago.
Can we stand with the Lakota people as they try one more time to try to stop the genocide that continues to wipe out the descendants of a once great and stable nation? Do we accept any responsibility to stand in solidarity with them this summer in White Clay?
Visit http://battleforwhiteclay.org and decide what you can do in solidarity with those of the Lakota Nation.