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Date Posted: 10:11:36 04/09/01 Mon
Author: Anonymous
Subject: White Clay Story



High schoolers hear Whiteclay
story
BY JODI RAVE LEE Lincoln Journal
Star

High school students gathered at
the Arts and Humanities Focus School Friday to hear
authentic voices tell the
story of Pine Ridge, Whiteclay,
murder and alcohol.

Tom Poor Bear, an Oglala Lakota,
shared stories about the lives of Native people there,
then and now.

"When they wanted our land, they
burned our tipis and killed our ponies," he said.
"Today those tipis are still
burning in our hearts. Our ponies
are still riding in the spirit world."

Poor Bear has taken the lead in a
campaign to eradicate Nebraska alcohol sales to the
Lakota of Pine Ridge.
About 90 students from the Arts
and Humanities Focus School and Lincoln High School
listened to four
panelists, including Poor Bear,
discuss current events in Whiteclay.

Whiteclay, the tiny unincorporated
town a stone's throw from South Dakota's Pine Ridge
Reservation.

Whiteclay, the village of 22 with
four off-sale bars that sell 4 million cans of beer to
their Pine Ridge neighbors.

Whiteclay, the little town that's
made big headlines since two men - Ronald Hard Heart
and Wilson "Wally"
Black Elk Jr. - were found
murdered there nearly two years ago. Poor Bear, who
was related to both men,
helped establish Camp Justice - a
trailer, a tipi and a cook shack - close to Whiteclay
to call attention to the
unsolved deaths.

Since the deaths of Hard Heart and
Black Elk, the story of Whiteclay has spread across
the country and has
grabbed the attention of some of
the Lincoln students' East Coast counterparts.

"I'm sort of a devotee to the
Howard Zinn brand of American history," said Paul
Wright, a freshman teacher at
Radnor High School near
Philadelphia. "It's what I call the seamy underside of
American history."

For those reasons, Wright said, he
didn't rely on high school textbooks when it came time
to study Native
history. He turned to the
Internet, instead, hoping to find some current
material for classroom discourse.

A Whiteclay-Pine Ridge photo essay
by Lincoln Journal Star photojournalist William Lauer
on the newspaper's
Web site caught his attention.

"One of the things that came
across pretty clearly is how there was, definitely, a
sense of just a general level of
frustration," he said.

The Hard Heart-Black Elk protest
photos were worth a thousand words, leading to
additional research and
classroom discussion.

Most of Wright's students come
from affluent families and attend school near the
private, upscale Villanova
University. Likewise, many
struggled to relate to life on Pine Ridge, but an
equal number became informed
enough to start asking questions,
their teacher said.

"I think the kids got a sense that
it was more than just these murders," Wright said.
"The murders might have
been the match strike, but
everything else had been building and building and
building."

Like Wright, Lincoln Arts and
Humanities teacher Linda Kalbach wasn't satisfied with
the standard fare for
curriculum on Native people.

"The issues are ones that can't be
addressed in any reading or textbook," said Kalbach,
who organized Friday's
panel discussion.

"The whole topic of Whiteclay and
Pine Ridge sort of evolved out of the topic of last
semester about faith and
faith as a tool for personal and
social change," she said.

Poor Bear and members of Camp
Justice, the Nebraska State Patrol, Nebraska State
Liquor Commission and
Nebraskans for Peace told students
of their roles in enforcing the law and working with
the people in the
Whiteclay-Pine Ridge area.

"In cities, we put cameras up to
see someone running a stop sign," said 18-year-old
Matt Baker of Lincoln High
School's Native American Scholars
class. "Why can't we do it to save a life?

"Why don't our people get the same
respect?" the young Lakota asked. "That's all I ask."

His comments were met with loud
applause, mostly from Native people. Many of the
non-Native students were
at the early stages of learning
about life around Whiteclay.

"They are on the brink between
cynicism and asking, 'How can we get involved in this
sort of thing?'¥" Kalbach
said.

Said 16-year-old Ali Weber of the
Arts and Humanities School: "I'm really excited about
hearing this. I think
definitely there needs to be one
specific officer sent to the town daily. I don't think
that's too much of a sacrifice
to make.

"Obviously, there's more of a
problem there than in Chadron or in any of the
surrounding towns."

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