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The Battle for Whiteclay was awarded Best Political Documentary at the 2009 New York International Independent Film Festival.
By FRANK LaMERE / THE NEW YORK TIMES / May 16, 2012
Frank LaMere is an activist and a member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska.
Any action short of shutting down Whiteclay and crippling the enterprise that peddles alcohol among the Lakota people is unacceptable. The death toll exacted on the Lakota people by Anheuser-Busch and its partners continues to rise, and the sooner the Sheridan County hell-hole can be leveled the better off Nebraska will be.
County, state and liquor industry officials have long known of the lawlessness and illegal activities that go on there, but they have been allowed to run from their responsibilities as public trustees by reducing the sad reality to a discussion about personal responsibility and market demand. Read the rest of this entry »
THE NEW YORK TIMES / Room for Debate / May 16, 2012
Whiteclay, Neb., just across the state line from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. (Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times)
In The New York Times earlier this month, Nicholas D. Kristof called for a boycott of Anheuser-Busch because of how the company’s products are affecting residents of an Indian reservation that has been decimated by alcoholism. The reservation is dry, but the nearby town of Whiteclay, Neb., (with a population of about 10 people) “sells more than four million cans of beer and malt liquor annually” and “is the main channel through which alcohol illegally enters the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.”
How can tribes, states, the federal government and local communities deal with alcoholism on and around reservations? If the beer companies and liquor stores are following the law, do they have a further responsibility to their communities?
These questions are discussed by Frank LaMere (Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska), Aneel Karnani (University of Michigan), Waheed Hussain (University of Pennsylvania), and Richard B. Luarkie (Governor, Pueblo of Laguna, N.M.)
By JIM HIGHTOWER / May 16, 2012 / NATION OF CHANGE [for audio]
Big brewers like Anheuser-Busch frequently admonish us imbibers of their grain products to “drink responsibly.” Well, I say back to them: Lobby responsibly.
In particular, I point to a disgusting binge of besotted lobbying by Anheuser-Busch (now owned by the Belgian beer conglomerate InBev) and other beer barons this year in the Nebraska legislature. Read the rest of this entry »
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF / May 9, 2012 / THE NEW YORK TIMES
PINE RIDGE, S.D. – This sprawling Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is a Connecticut-sized zone of prairie and poverty, where the have-nots are defined less by the money they lack than by suffocating hopelessness.
In the national number line of inequality, people here represent the “other 1 percent,” the bottom of the national heap. Read the rest of this entry »
Letter to the Editor of THE NEW YORK TIMES / May 8, 2012
Re “A Battle With the Brewers,” by Nicholas D. Kristof (column, May 6):
We care about the tragic problems of tribal members on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and are greatly concerned about alcohol abuse there and anywhere. When our products become associated with a problem, it is damaging to all of us as parents and members of communities, and to us as a company; it’s the last thing we want for our consumers or our products. Read the rest of this entry »
By MICHAEL YUDELL (associate professor at Drexel University School of Public Health)/ May 8, 2012 / THE PUBLIC’S HEALTH (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
In Sunday’s New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof called for a boycott of Anheuser-Busch (maker of beers like Budweiser, Rolling Rock, and, for the fancier among you, Stella Artois) for its role in selling alcohol in the tiny Nebraska town of Whiteclay. According to Kristof, the stores in Whiteclay (population: about 10) sell more than four million cans of beer and malt liquor annually, most of it by Anheuser-Busch. Read the rest of this entry »
By NICHOLAS KRISTOF / “On the Ground” / May 5, 2012 / THE NEW YORK TIMES
My Sunday column looks at a particularly egregious example of a company putting greed above conscience. I’m speaking of Anheuser Busch selling hundreds of thousands of gallons of alcohol on the edge of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, knowing that almost all of it will go to illicit drinking on the reservation and feed a devastating alcohol problem there. Incidentally, if you want to learn more about the issue, you can read this Times article or watch the documentary “Battle for Whiteclay.” (The Times reporter and photographer were roughed up in Whiteclay during their reporting, but I ran into no problems.)
A lawsuit was filed against Anheuser Busch in February, but the company isn’t even willing to engage critics and discuss the issue. That’s why I’m undertaking my own personal boycott of Busch products, such as Budweiser: If a company cares only about dollars, a boycott might get its attention. Read the column and tell me what you think. Anyone going to join me?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF / May 5, 2012 / NEW YORK TIMES
WHITECLAY, Neb. – AFTER seeing Anheuser-Busch’s devastating exploitation of American Indians, I’m done with its beer.
The human toll is evident here in Whiteclay: men and women staggering on the street, or passed out, whispers of girls traded for alcohol. The town has a population of about 10 people, but it sells more than four million cans of beer and malt liquor annually — because it is the main channel through which alcohol illegally enters the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation a few steps away. Read the rest of this entry »
SCOTTSBLUFF STAR HERALD / May 3, 2009
Journalism loves Whiteclay.
Not Whiteclay, the border city in Nebraska, but “Whiteclay” the metaphor — the serial melodrama about modern-day snake oil peddlers who sell an ocean of firewater to innocent Indians. Read the rest of this entry »
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS / April 1, 2012 / OMAHA WORLD-HERALD
LINCOLN (AP) — Beer vendors in a tiny Nebraska town would be forced to discriminate against residents of a neighboring South Dakota American Indian reservation if a judge agrees with a lawsuit accusing the retailers and others of knowingly contributing to the reservation’s alcohol-related problems, attorneys said in asking for the lawsuit to be dismissed. Read the rest of this entry »