Can a Bud boycott help the Pine Ridge Reservation?
Retailers in Whiteclay, Neb., sell more than four million cans of beer and malt liquor a year -- not to the town's 10 residents but to Indians on a reservation, a few hundred yards away, where alcohol is banned and one quarter of all children have fetal-alcohol syndrome. Should they stop?
Can a Bud boycott help the Pine Ridge Reservation?
Michael Yudell
By Michael Yudell
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.
Almost all of that alcohol, it turns out, is consumed by individuals living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, just across the border from Whiteclay, in South Dakota. The sale and consumption of alcohol is illegal on the Reservation, but Whiteclay is a few hundred yards away, just outside tribal jurisdiction.
Whatever you might think of alcohol prohibition, tribal rules on the Pine Ridge Reservation explicitly forbid its sale with good reason—as many as two-thirds of reservation residents may be alcoholics and one-quarter of children born there have fetal-alcohol syndrome. More than 90 percent of its residents live in poverty. Life expectancy for those living on reservation land is among the lowest in the western hemisphere.
This isn’t just any ordinary prohibition focused on the morality of alcohol consumption. This is a crisis — a matter of life, death, and disability for too many members of the Oglala Sioux Nation who live at Pine Ridge.
Kristof believes that “Anheuser-Busch and other brewers pour hundreds of thousands of gallons of alcohol into the liquor stores of Whiteclay, knowing that it ends up consumed illicitly by Pine Ridge residents and fuels alcoholism, crime and misery there.”
Anheuser-Busch, in a statement sent to me Monday, said it believes “The New York Times column misreported facts in this case,” and said that, “as a producer, we cannot sell beer directly to retailers or consumers and we obey all laws where we operate.” But this is clearly not what Kristof argued. His critique of Anheuser-Busch is that its “business model here is based on violating tribal rules and destroying the Indians’ way of living.” “The only purpose of Whiteclay is to sell to tribe members — there’s nobody else around,” Kristof wrote in his column, “and the tribe can’t do anything about it.”
So what’s the answer?
The Times reported in April on an attempt by the Nebraska legislature to create “alcohol impact zones” that would limit sales of alcohol products in areas impacted by alcohol related crimes (the crime rates on Pine Ridge are also very high). That effort is stalled in committee. According to the Times, seven of eight Nebraska Senate committee members have received more than $21,000 in contributions from Anheuser-Busch over the past five years.
A $500 million lawsuit filed in February by the Oglala Sioux against beer makers, including Anheuser-Busch and Miller Brewing, accuses the brewers of “encouraging the illegal possession, transport and consumption of alcohol on the reservation.” “We are a dry reservation. We are going to have to do something that is going to benefit our people in terms of rehabilitation,” Myron Pourier, Fifth Member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, told the Indian Country Today Media Network in February, when the lawsuit was filed. No money won in the suit would go to individuals, a lawyer for the tribe said at the time. It would be used to help create programs for newborns with fetal alcohol syndrome, children with alcoholism, and alcohol treatment centers and programs.
The response from one of the liquor stores in Whiteclay is a curious one: that the lawsuit encourages discrimination. Jerald Rauterkus, an attorney for Stateline Liquor, told the Washington Post last month that the lawsuit, if successful, would “command retail defendants to refuse the sale of their otherwise publicly available goods to members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe who live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation based solely on their race and ethnicity.”
According to the Anheuser-Busch website, which requires you to enter your date of birth before gaining access to the content, the company and its “wholesalers have committed more than $930 million in national advertising campaigns and community-based programs” over the past three decades. And that’s great. But the situation at Pine Ridge calls for more than alcohol companies supporting the standard programs to reduce problem and underage drinking as well as drunk driving.
And it certainly doesn’t call for assigning subtle blame to the victims here — those suffering from alcoholism on the Pine Ridge Reservation. According to that statement sent to me by Anheuser-Busch, the company wishes “problems like this could be easily solved by brash statements or assigning blame, even if it is misplaced.” “We care about the people of Pine Ridge and hope that together we can make a difference in addressing these problems, the statement added, “but these are, in fact, deeply complex, societal, cultural and sometimes physiological issues.”
Read that last sentence again, carefully. Yes, it is true that the issues at Pine Ridge are a historical legacy that are socially and culturally driven, and there certainly isn’t space here for a lecture on the ways in which the indigenous peoples of North America have been royally screwed by just about everybody for centuries.
But “physiological issues” did not cause this problem. There is a common misperception that Native Americans are more susceptible to alcohol dependence because of some sort of predisposition. Research into the nature of alcohol dependence in Native American groups has shown that while some groups have high rates of alcoholism, others have low rates. Furthermore, as the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism points out in a recent publication, “despite the fact that more Native American people die of alcohol-related causes than do any other ethnic group in the United States, research shows that there is no difference in the rates of alcohol metabolism and enzyme patterns between Native Americans and Whites.”
It would be easy for Anheuser-Busch and other beer distributors to walk away from Whiteclay. The money earned there is barely a drop their giant kegs (Belgium-based Anheuser-Busch InBev, the parent company of Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis, had revenue of $39.05 billion in 2011). But they are afraid that if they walk away from Whiteclay, what lies ahead? Other vulnerable communities that suffer disproportionately from alcohol dependence might be the next to call for a boycott.
Perhaps.
The situation at Pine Ridge, however, is so extreme that it calls for unusual measures. And even if the beer companies walk away, as Kristof himself admits, some residents may just drive farther to get their fix. But it would be a start. And Anheuser-Busch and the other companies involved should do the right thing and not only walk away, but dedicate some of the $39 billion towards making the lives of those at Pine Ridge just a little bit better. If they don’t, I wouldn’t underestimate the power of one New York Times reporter’s ability to move the public on this issue.
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I vow to stop paying taxes and shun countries who are aware that the War on Drugs is a joke and are actually perpetuating poverty and crime in said country. Also, I will stop paying taxes to countries who perpetuate death and front it as a War on Terror. Finally, I will continue to lack voter registration in said country due to the corrupt, thieving government and falsehood of democracy.— jerseyjoe- Jersey eh? Could have swor you had a new York accent — Raerae3
- I don't get it. Are they actually claiming this town should not be allowed to sell alcohol because their next door neighbors can't hold their own when it comes to drinking? What a country. What is next, banning a natural plant that grows in the ground?— towelie
- WHAT PART OF THEY DO NOT SELL TO THE STORE OR THE CONSUMER DID YOU MISS, "JOURNALIST"? THEY SELL TO LARGE DISTRIBUTORS WHO THEN SELL TO STORES WHO THEN SELL TO CONSUMERS.— AbeVigoda
- Wow. AbeVigoda (I am a huge fan!), Stonewall Jackson, and Towelie (I presume of South Park fame?) posted on our blog within minutes of each other. Awesome. Gotta love philly.com. But again, we don't argue that in most cases such a drastic action should be taken. But this is a public health crisis that goes far beyond arguments about individual responsibility. The community, including beer producers and distributors, should come together and do the right thing here. Which in this case means walking away from a tiny bit of profit.— publicshealth
- mmmmmm....beer— ICDogg
- i wonder how the socially-conscious lawyers will make on this settlement with AB...— USAFirst1
- Ha. What whitey did to the Native Americans makes what's happened to the Palestinians look like a summer picnic on the banks of the Dead Sea. Hey, slip some small pox in the Bud, might as well steal what little bits of h*** they have left.— CiceroSpuriousDeodatus
- It amazes me that folks are dumb enough to believe the U.S. weaponized Small Pox 50 years before germ theory was understood.
Critical thinking, try it.— Tannhauser - Really? Germ warfare began, with the first germ. You moron. One thing I hate is an educated fool.
— Raerae3 - So the evil big corporation is to blame because they want to make mnoney! Wait, no it is because they sell a legal, regulated and taxed product. No, it is because adults in a free country cannot control themselves, so point fingers anywhere but directly at the alcoholics. This is not the fault of InBev or AnHeusuer Busch. Those who know they have a problem are responsible for seeking treatment. Blaming the operators of private stores is weal, misguided and lacks common sense. I do not eat pork, so it should be banned at any store I shop in. I should never have to smell bacon cooking because I don't eat it. Someone should protect me from everyone else having the right to choose what they wish to eat. (Isn't that the point of this article?)— Getinline
- I live in South Dakota and can tell you if it wasn't here they (traibal members) would get it somewhere else. Alcoholism is a major problem because when people are given handouts they lose all self respect. This has been going on in Pine Ridge for over 100 years the rest iof America has only had 4 years of Bari giving stuff away. Soon all America will be like Pine Ridge and then the tribe will take all the land back. Socialism stinks no matter who is on the receiving end.— jakster
- I get the whole idea that this is a special circumstance, except that it isn't. The tribe must do more to educate their members. They need to provide as much support and recovery programs as possible. Prohibition does not work. It has nothing to do with regulation. These people have a terrible problem, but the retailers, distributors, wholesalers and brewers are not the cause...— Getinline
- @getinline. I agree that the retailers, distributors, etc. are not the cause. But if you take a closer look at what I wrote, I argue this requires a community solution given the crisis nature of what is going on. So, yes, given the rates of alcoholism and fetal alcohol syndrome at Pine Ridge, this is a special circumstance.— publicshealth
- you are responsible for the decisions you make in life.— sdb
