WHITECLAY ACTIVISTS PROTEST AT DISTRIBUTORSHIP

EFFORTS TO STOP ALCOHOL FLOWING FROM WHITECLAY, NEBRASKA TO THE PINE RIDGE INDIAN RESERVATION MOVED TO THE PANHANDLE TODAY, BUT PROTESTORS DID NOT GET THE ANSWERS THEY WERE SEEKING.

Having been unsuccessful in attempts to blockade beer from entering the Pine Ridge Reservation from Nebraska, Protestors took a different tack Thursday. Native American activists and members of Nebraskans for Peace picketed outside the Scottsbluff Budweiser distributorship, seeking the help of Anheuser-Busch in dealing with issues north of Whiteclay, including a reduction in alcohol-related deaths.

Says activist Frank Lamere, "Many of them are our children, scores of children who are dead because of alcohol that is illegally exported into Pine Ridge from Nebraska with the misery, the devastation that goes with it."

Some 20% of all children on the reservation suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome. But efforts to speak with the owner of High Plains Budweiser were met with what they considered to be a patronizing press release.

"They, like legislators in Nebraska, continue to take a powder on this issue which should raise red flags among every one of us," commented Lamere.