Whiteclay, Neb. - A suspected arson fire early Saturday and promises to "take over Whiteclay" today raised tensions another notch in this town bordering the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

While a third straight day of demonstrations ended without violence or destruction Saturday, organizers promised that today would be the day that Indian activists move to enact "cease-and-desist" orders presented to the four liquor stores here. The stores annually sell an estimated 4 million cans of beer to Indians on the reservation, which bans alcohol.

"Tomorrow, Whiteclay is ours," shouted Dale Looks Twice, one of the demonstration organizers. "No more killing our people with alcohol."

About 180 Indian activists marched on Whiteclay Saturday from nearby Pine Ridge, S.D., in the continuation of seven weeks of protests against beer sales to Indians and to call attention to the unsolved deaths two months ago of two Indian men.

The number of marchers fell well short of projections that as many as 1,000 people would join the protests because of the large influx of people for the reservation's annual pow-wow this weekend. But organizers said that today's march would meet that figure and would include American Indian Movement leaders such as Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellecourt who were not among the marchers on Saturday.

"We will show Whiteclay that we are serious," said Tom Poor Bear, an Oglala tribe sergeant-at-arms and half-brother of one of the slain men.

At an impromptu rally Saturday in the middle of Whiteclay, organizers pointed to a parade float decorated with boxes depicting structures in a Whiteclay of the future - indoor swimming pools, movie theaters but no alcohol establishments. "When we take over Whiteclay tomorrow," Looks Twice said Saturday, to hoots and shouts from the crowd, "this is what it will look like."

A dress shop, closed years ago and now used for storage, was set ablaze early Saturday. The fire was reported about 1:45 a.m. MDT, shortly after law enforcement officers - a constant presence over the past two days - had left the dusty village for the night.

An estimated $10,000 in damage was done to the B-S Lakota Store before firefighters from nearby Rushville could extinguish the flames. The Nebraska State Fire Marshal's Office and the Sheridan County Sheriff's Office are investigating.

There was a strong smell of diesel fuel in the building, said Capt. Tom Parker of the Nebraska State Patrol, which suggests an arson fire.

"It's made everyone a little jumpier,"said Ruby Robbins, a clerk at the Jack & Jill Grocery Store in Whiteclay.

Inside the business Saturday afternoon, owner Tim Hotz paced as he pulled on a cigarette and waited for the marchers. Another clerk chewed his fingernails as he looked out onto the sun-baked main street, Nebraska Highway 87. In three vans parked at the end of the street, Nebraska state troopers, dressed in black SWAT team clothing, waited. A plane circled overhead. Nearly 20 patrol cruisers were in town, assisted by county sheriff's and tribal police cars. By midday, only one liquor store, the Arrowhead Inn, remained open, selling cases and 12-packs of beer at a brisk pace. It closed during the three-hour march and rally. Hotz, who has owned the Jack & Jill (which sells no beer) for 18 years, said he planned to wait and see what happens today. His was the only business in Whiteclay to remain open during the march. "My business was still in town," he said, referring to the float replica of a new Whiteclay. Parker said the job of law enforcement will remain the same today: to protect the property and people of Whiteclay.

Down the street, Indian activists living at Camp Justice, a temporary camp of tepees and tents just across the border into South Dakota, vowed to remain camped there until answers come in the investigation of the deaths of Wilson "Wally" Black Elk Jr. and Ronald Hard Heart. Their beaten bodies were found on June 8, just north of the state line in South Dakota. The FBI and the Oglala Tribal Police are investigating. The deaths of the two men have fueled rumors about whether they were killed in Nebraska and dumped across the border, as well as speculation that law enforcement officials, gang members or even hate squads were to blame. "If these two people murdered were white people, they would have had this area swarming with FBI agents and they would have solved this by now,"said Poor Bear, a half-brother of Black Elk.

Indians on the reservation, and nearby white residents, disagree on whether closing the Whiteclay stores would help lessen rampant alcohol problems on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Many, however, agree that the lack of progress in the investigation of the deaths has fueled rumors and distrust and that the marches can help address that.

"I think what they're doing is good," 65-year-old Pine Ridge resident Bill Horn Cloud said of the marches. He remembers the days, now long gone, when "No Dogs, No Indians" signs were displayed at businesses in Alliance, his hometown. On Saturday, Horn Cloud golfed along with 140 others in the annual all-Indian tournament in Gordon and watched the traditional pow-wow parade in Pine Ridge. He didn't march with the demonstrators but hoped they would help draw attention, and action, to the investigations. "There are some unsolved murders here," he said.

                   Indian Activists Hold Whiteclay for Two Hours
                   BY PAUL HAMMEL AND JEFF BUNDY
                        WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITERS

Whiteclay, Neb. - After taking over this tiny village on the border of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for two hours Sunday, Indian activists left, pledging instead to halt traffic from the reservation into Whiteclay and to use legal means to end alcohol sales.

About 20 Indians, a small remnant of the 200 who had marched on Whiteclay earlier in the afternoon, left the village at about 4:40 p.m. MDT after organizers met with Nebraska State Patrol Col. Tom Nesbitt.

Tom Poor Bear, who has led seven weeks of marches on Whiteclay, said he would seek an injunction from the Oglala Tribal Court today to end beer sales in the village, which he says was illegally taken from the tribe around the turn of the century.

Poor Bear also pledged to use human barricades to halt traffic from the reservation into Whiteclay, an unincorporated village of 22 that has four stores that sell 4 million cans of beer a year to reservation Indians.

"People don't understand our spirituality or our cause, but they will understand them where it counts, and that is in their pocketbooks," Poor Bear said.

Earlier Sunday, about 200 Indian activists marched into Whiteclay, pledging to take over the village and stay as long as it took to halt liquor sales there and end what they contend is racist treatment of Indians.

But about two hours after the occupation began, Nesbitt, who was directing a force of about 75 state troopers, walked into town and talked with Poor Bear. The 20 Indians remaining picked up picnic tables and a buffet they had set up in the middle of Whiteclay's main street, Nebraska Highway 87, and walked out of town.

The action culminated four straight days of marches on the village and marked the seventh week of demonstrations against what organizers say is continued racism against Indians in Nebraska communities bordering the reservation.

"There's not even a public restroom in this place," said Poor Bear, as he spoke to about 200 marchers in the middle of Whiteclay. "It's like the black people in the '60s."

One Whiteclay merchant said the reason wasn't racism, but the lack of water from private wells in town.

Saturday's threat to take over Whiteclay boosted tensions here and brought more state troopers and law enforcement officers from Sheridan County and nearby Rushville, Neb.

About 40 marked State Patrol cruisers, as well as three black vans and a school bus carrying black-clad troopers in riot gear, were near the village of 22 residents Sunday.

But confrontations between the troopers and the marchers were brief.

The marchers walked the two miles from Pine Ridge, S.D., to Whiteclay under cloudless skies and with temperatures in the mid-90s.

After praying for Wilson "Wally" Black Elk Jr. and Ronald Hard Heart, whose battered bodies were found just north of the state line with into South Dakota, they marched into Whiteclay, waving flags of the American Indian Movement, carrying photos of the two and bearing a banner that said, "Taking a Donated Town on Stolen Indian Land."

Briefly, part of the crowd advanced on a dozen patrol cruisers parked at the south end of Whiteclay. The marchers shouted "Go home!" and "Don't you have other places to be?"

Some rocks were thrown at a state trooper with a video camera on top of a Whiteclay business. Glue was poured into the locks of some businesses. And a woman wrote "Indian Killer" in the dust on the hood of a patrol cruiser.

But just as quickly as the confrontations started, march organizers called the people back. "Come on, we don't want that," Poor Bear shouted.

After a few speeches, Poor Bear announced the intention to occupy Whiteclay peacefully "to clean up the white man's mess."

"The town has illegally been here too long. Now, we're exercising our right to live on and eat on our land," Poor Bear said, restating a contention by the activists that Whiteclay was wrongfully taken in 1904 from the tribe, which bans all alcohol sales and possession on its land.

Unlike Saturday, every business in Whiteclay, including a grocery store that does not sell beer, was closed Sunday when the march began.

As Cora Daugherty locked the gates on the Stateline Auto Service repair shop she co-owns, she expressed her anger at the lack of protection from the State Patrol and Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns.

"He doesn't care about us," Daugherty said. She said the police presence was increased only after she threatened to take her own steps to protect her business. "It's all we've got," she said.

The deaths of Black Elk and Hard Heart have rekindled feelings of distrust between Indian activists and law enforcement officials on both sides of the border over unsolved murders on and near the reservation since the 1970s. They also inflamed feelings that the alcohol sales at Whiteclay are to blame.

Others, including area merchants and many Indians on the Pine Ridge reservation, say that closing the Whiteclay beer outlets will only move the problem farther away or increase the reselling of beer and wine by bootleggers on the reservation. Alcoholics, they say, will drive as far as necessary to feed their habit.

And they blame the recent marches on outsiders.

Poor Bear, who is Black Elk's half brother, is sergeant at arms for the Oglala Sioux Tribe and lives in nearby Wamblee. He dismissed the fact that AIM leaders Clyde Bellecourt and Dennis Banks weren't there Sunday, saying that they supported the cause in other ways.

Poor Bear said he must fly to Minneapolis on a family matter today, but he said he will ask the Oglala Tribal Court to issue an injunction against alcohol sales in Whiteclay.

He said he would meet Tuesday with federal attorneys in Rapid City, S.D., to discuss why autopsy reports on the two slain men haven't been released.

Wendell Bird Head, an Oglala Sioux who lives in Omaha, said he traveled to participate in the Whiteclay marches this weekend because people in his hometown need to realize that Indians on the reservation are still subjected to racism.

"There's a double standard here," Bird Head said. "We're peaceful people, but we're getting tired of they way we're being treated."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
STORY #4

S. Dakota sets forum on slayings of Indians
BY HEIDI BELL
Rapid City Journal
 

RAPID CITY, S.D. -- A state civil rights committee plans to hold an open forum on the unsolved murders involving Indians.

Two of those murders sparked recent protests in Whiteclay, Neb.

"(We need to) do something yesterday about the murders in Indian Country," said Silke Hansen, acting regional director of the U.S. Department of Justice's Community Relations Service. "The perception is that no one gives a hoot." Hansen spoke at a meeting of the South Dakota Advisory Committee in Rapid City. The committee makes recommendations to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an independent fact-finding board that advises Congress and the president.

The U.S. Commission has asked Attorney General Janet Reno to look into the deaths of Ronald Hard Heart and Wilson Black Elk Jr. The two men were found beaten to death on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation near the Nebraska border in June.

When no arrests were made, Indians marched to Whiteclay to protest the lack of progress. Marchers also complained about alcohol sales in Whiteclay, where four stores sell more than $3 million in alcohol each year -- mostly to residents of the reservation , where many people struggle with alcohol problems.

The first Whiteclay march ended with a grocery store burned and looted. Subsequent marches have been peaceful.

Although the commission did not set a date for the forum on the unsolved murders, several commission members said Friday their most urgent goal is giving people a chance to speak. John Dulles, director of the Rocky Mountain Regional Office for the U.S. C ommission on Civil Rights, said the upcoming forum needs to be more than just talk. He said government officials, including prosecutors and law enforcement, need to be present to answer questions.

Oglala Sioux Tribal President Harold Salway, who attended part of Friday's meeting, said he was open to having a civil/human rights group on the reservation to hear complaints.

"I think it's palatable," he said. "I think the situation is prime." In addition to a forum, Elsie Meeks, the first American Indian appointed to the U.S. Commission, suggested establishing offices where people can go to make civil rights complaints and get information on what to do next.

Hansen, whose job is to help resolve and prevent racial and ethnic conflict and violence, said there are three components to violence: a perception of unfair treatment, a perception that there is no redress, and a triggering incident. The Los Angeles riots that followed the Rodney King beating trial were actually triggered when police officers were found not guilty of using excessive force, she said.

The lack of adequate law enforcement and investigation, both on the reservation and off, was a frequent complaint. Questions of sovereignty and jurisdiction are often part of the problem, but Hansen said they don't have to be.

"You can start by saying, "How can we provide the best law enforcement for the people here, and what would it take in terms of cooperation?'" she said, instead of starting with the question of who has jurisdiction. "Jurisdiction and s overeignty are not negotiable issues, so they should not be on the table."