Scottsbluff Beer Distributor Site of Whiteclay Beer Protest
Each day, the four licensed off-sale alcohol dealers in Whiteclay, Nebraska supply over 12,500 cans of beer to the residents of the dry Pine Ridge Reservation — totaling more than 4.5 million cans annually. Since Whiteclay first burst onto the news scene in 1999, public attention has focused almost exclusively on the four retail suppliers doing business in this unincorporated village just two hundred feet from the reservation border.
Given the high volume of sales daily taking place in this remote border town, however, the four Whiteclay dealers, on their own, could not possibly sustain an operation of this scale without outside assistance. Somebody else is supplying the ‘suppliers’ — meaning the mechanics for maintaining the alcohol supply in this 14-person hamlet extend much deeper into the state.
Whiteclay’s four outlets, which are only licensed to sell beer and malt liquor, carry the product lines of all three major brewers — Miller, Coors and Anheuser Busch — on their shelves. Eighty percent of the market share in Whiteclay, though, is controlled by just one company — Anheuser-Busch. Budweiser, Busch and Bud Light beer and Hurricane Malt Liquor (supplied by the wholesale distributor “High Plains Budweiser” of Scottsbluff) dominate the sales to reservation patrons.
To keep peddling their poison to the Pine Ridge Reservation, where the alcoholism rate is conservatively estimated to be 80 percent, underage drinking among teens is epidemic and one out of four children are born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, the four licensed dealers in Whiteclay depend on the direct economic cooperation of other entities throughout Nebraska. They depend on the wholesale distributors in Scottsbluff, Gering and Alliance for regular re-supply. They depend on their paid lobbyists to keep the continually unfolding tragedy at Whiteclay from being addressed by the Legislature. They depend on the passivity of the Governor’s Office, which appoints the Liquor Control Commission and directs the Nebraska State Patrol. And they depend on the lax law enforcement by the Sheridan County Sheriff’s Department and the State Patrol to allow the illegal trafficking that takes place on the hour day after day after day.
To highlight the broader economic collusion that enables the dealers in Whiteclay to operate, nationally known Native American activist and Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska member Frank LaMere has called for a protest at the High Plains Budweiser distributorship in Scottsbluff Thursday, August 30. Concerned Nebraskans will meet outside the distributorship at 2810 Avenue M at 10:30 a.m. to speak to the ownership and prevail upon them to stop selling Anheuser-Busch products in Whiteclay. In the presence of the media, LaMere will detail the social, cultural and economic devastation alcohol is wreaking on the Pine Ridge Reservation — the target market for Whiteclay’s alcohol sales.
And should the owner of High Plains Budweiser refuse to follow the Anheuser-Busch corporate policy of responsible distribution, protestors are prepared to next take their case to the corporate headquarters in St. Louis and appeal directly to the management for assistance in ending this mercenary and deadly trade against the Oglala Sioux Tribe.
Contact:
Mark Vasina
402-890-6958
