Why do we need your support

Who I am.

My name is Tom Poor Bear. I am an Oglala Lakota.  What you folks would call a "Sioux".

I live on a reservation located in Pine Ridge, South Dakota.

The damages generated by the sale of alcohol to our people have been dramatic since this land was arbritrarily taken from us.  Today, I am not going to go back into our history.  This is well known or may be easily discovered by those with any interest. I am not going to complain over and again regarding the way our people have been treated to date. Some good has come about that has helped to address some of the injustices that originated from this era.  However the most important of these injustices have yet to be resolved.

 This is why your support is important

We Native Americans barely survived the ethnic cleansing you call colonisation.  Now we simply ask for the same rights to a decent living  and equal protection as any other american citizen. We want our children to be able to grow up in a safe, clean  and sane environment. We want them to be able to go to school and to participate in the national effort. With our specific knowledge of the environment and our values, we  contribute the best of our culture to our National table for a better world. Like you, we feel concerned by pollution, social developments and the world wide economic systems influence on human beings. We do not want our children to be left behind because of archaic illegal legislation; now a century or more old

The facts

In order to protect our people, alcohol is forbidden on all the reservations of the United States.  Every  locality in the U.S., their inhabitants, businesses and commercial public efforts  are subject to the local zoning ordinances as determined by their duely elected constituencies. 

With one exception:    Pine Ridge

By a Congress decision, Whiteclay (2,5 miles from Pine Ridge) belongs to the Pine Ridge reservation. Whiteclay is in fact owned only by americans whose business is only sales of alcohol to Oglala Lakota!
My people is sick and dying from ravages from alcohol. Domestic violence, foetal alcoholism  don't give our children a chance to live their lifeof children, and even less a chance to be happy today or tomorrow.

What hope do they have?

What kind of life is waiting for them?
We want the return of Whiteclay to our tribal government in order to shut down definitively those alcohol shops and for this I on the behalf on my people, the Oglala Lakota and to make an exemple for other Native american to fight for their survey, i sue the state of Nebraska. 

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