Close-up
Lakotas come home to crushing alcoholism, destitution

By The Washington Post

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

Related stories A reservation's relentless poverty

PINE RIDGE, S.D. — The Oglala Lakota Sioux Nation is growing. Its population — 14,000 to 20,000 — is boosted by a baby boom and by adults who are returning, joining those who never left in their ongoing struggles.

There is not much to do in Pine Ridge beyond the hard business of surviving. The Oglala Lakota Sioux reservation has no movie theater, no department store, no public library and no public transportation. The closest thing to excitement is Big Bat's, the combination gas station, convenience store and deli at "the four-way" — the four-way intersection — in the village of Pine Ridge, which is also home to the tribal government offices, courts and hospital.

When Webster Poor Bear returned six years ago after decades away, shaking off the demons of the Vietnam War and raising four children and stepchildren, he wanted peace. He needed the Lakotas' spiritual ways: sun dances, sweat lodges, the wisdom of medicine men.

But White Clay, Neb., a border town not two miles from the village of Pine Ridge, turned Poor Bear, now 53, into an activist, as he had been in his youth.

Of all the problems facing the reservation, White Clay (population 22) is the one that people mention first. White Clay consists of two blocks of old, scarred one-story buildings on dirt sidewalks. Half are boarded up. Of the few that are open, three are package stores that sell beer and malt liquor through slitlike windows. Since alcohol is banned on the reservation, White Clay reaps a fortune from the Lakotas' drinking. The package stores, tribal leaders and Nebraska liquor authorities say, sell about 11,000 cans of beer a day to Indians.

Poor Bear had relatives who loitered in White Clay, including a brother, Wilson Black Elk Jr., and a cousin, Ronald Hard Heart. On June 8, 1999, one month before President Clinton's "poverty tour" visit, the two men's bodies were found, beaten and mutilated, in a gulch on reservation land 100 yards north of White Clay.

Many marches, meetings and lobbying efforts later, the killings remain unsolved. Mark Vukelich, the FBI agent in charge of South Dakota, said his office is still "very actively investigating all leads." Day and night, at least a few dozen Lakotas are downing 40-ounce Budweisers in White Clay's alleys until they pass out.

"It's difficult to be here," Poor Bear said on a recent visit.

He took a bullet in his knuckle during the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee between the American Indian Movement and the FBI. Now drinking men and women were surrounding him, greeting him with awe and surprise. He knew some from the old days of the movement. He returned their courtesies.

Even people who want White Clay package stores shut down, such as Poor Bear, concede that the problems traced to its alcohol sales will only move elsewhere until alcoholism is addressed. But still he was angry.
 
Nebraska officials say they cannot close lawfully operating businesses, he said, but do not mention that it is illegal to allow people to drink outside the stores.

Recent months have brought a little good news. There were four package stores in White Clay until April, when the owner of one lost his liquor license for selling used cars without a license, a felony. And in June, the Nebraska Democratic Party, at its state convention, voted to support a resolution banning alcohol sales in White Clay.

Trying to help

In Pine Ridge, people like to say progress is measured in inches.

Troy and Pat Perkins are not sure how to measure their efforts. Four years ago when they moved to the reservation, Troy Perkins, a member of one of its largest extended families, brought his wife and two daughters (now 8 and 12) to live there for the first time. His mother had retired as a mail carrier and wanted to travel, but she worried that vandals or squatters would overrun her house. The Perkinses, eager for their girls to learn more about their father's culture, agreed to leave Rapid City, S.D., and housesit.

The needs on the reservation hit them hard, especially among the elders. One — Louis Braveheart, in his 80s — was living in a peeling tin can of a trailer with no heat or electricity. Sometimes they would bump into him on the side of the road as he walked more than 15 miles each way for groceries.

Pat Perkins, with help, began an adopt-an-elder program. Braveheart's neighbors built him a cabin, and the Perkinses found him a woodstove and a sponsor to pay his utilities.

Through the Internet, the adopt-an-elder program found 400 sponsors from all over the country and beyond. The Perkinses also began holding giveaways, a Lakota tradition in which families give their possessions to neighbors, usually in honor of a loved one who has died.

Eventually, Helping Hands of Wounded Knee became an official 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and a full-time preoccupation.

Too difficult to go on

But the Perkinses recently called it quits.

"It's just become too hard to help people," Pat Perkins said, sitting in her back yard during what she called the last giveaway. Perkins, 44, said she had pins in her back from a fall 20 years ago, while she was in the Army, and fibromyalgia. She often felt too sick to handle Helping Hands. Requests for help always exceeded donations. She was also tired of deflecting gossip.

Rumor had it that the Perkinses were keeping the goods they collected. With Troy Perkins working full time as a security guard in the old Pine Ridge hospital, a job hard to come by, and Pat collecting a disability check from the Department of Veterans Affairs, they worked the giveaway programs as volunteers. But people doubted it.

Later, as she drove to a friend's house, Pat Perkins acknowledged that she thought the reservation's problems are too deep to solve in less than a generation, with less than major help. The Perkinses wonder whether they will stick it out in Pine Ridge as their daughters approach high school, when two out of three Pine Ridge students drop out.

"In my humble opinion," she said, "the tribe should hire professional consultants who come up with a Marshall Plan for fixing every aspect of life here."