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Hardin, Montana Requests Guantanamo Detainees

SpotsCat said:
This is so heartbreaking, I almost regret posting it.

Just south of the Pine Ridge Indian Reseervation in South Dakota, only about 1/2 mile south of the town of Pine Ridge, lies the town of Whiteclay, Nebraska - a small little town with a population of about 20. Also in Whiteclay are four liquor stores.

According to a March 10th, 2009 article in the Omaha World-Herald --

"Drive slowly through Whiteclay, and you’ll likely see Native American men sitting along the road, often in a stupor. Stop and park, and you see up close the despondency of individuals visibly in the grips of alcoholism.

Just up the road from Whiteclay, across the shortgrass plains country that marks the border with South Dakota, lies the Pine Ridge Reservation. Home to the Oglala Sioux, the reservation is lamentably burdened by unspeakable poverty and hopelessness. The four liquor stores in Whiteclay, an unincorporated village of fewer than 20 people, sell beer in remarkable volume to the reservation’s residents."

"Remarkable volume" doesn't even begin to come close to describing the beer sales in Whiteclay. According to the Liquor Control Commission in the State of Nebraska, in 2008 these four stores sold an estimated 175,690 cases of beer in 2008.

Let me illustrate how big that number is --

On occasion I carry beer in the truck as cargo. A pallet of bottles of beer is 7 cases to a layer, 6 layers high - 42 cases/pallet. I can carry 21 pallets of bottled beer (882 cases) in a semi-trailer without being overweight.

175,690 cases of beer = 199 trailer loads of beer. Each one of these Whiteclay liquor stores is going through about a trailer load of beer a week.

481 cases of beer sold everyday in a small town in Nebraska located just across the state line from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation... the numbers speak for themselves.

This isn't something I say lightly: I'm ashamed of my country for what we've done - and what we continue to do - to the Native Americans. :(
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I agree wholeheartedly...alcohol was and is being used to kill the spirit of American Indians and their heritage. I agree with you I am also ashamed of my country for what they have done and continue to do to Native Americans.
 
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NDNdancer said:
Native Americans are subject to the exact same laws as you are. They are arrested quite frequently in Hardin
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I can only tell you of my personal experiences on patrol with a close friend who was a Big Horn County deputy in Hardin for several years. When we came across a Res Indian wandering drunk through the streets, passed out in alleys, fighting, etc., we picked them up and brought them to a holding cell in Hardin. The res police were called and the individuals were released to their custody.

They were not arrested for public drunkenness.

NDNdancer said:
Given that in Montana, the laws of the state were developed to make just -being- Indian illegal, and any activity pertaining to our cultures was illegal........... anyway.
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I'd like to know more about this. Do you have a good website you can recommend?
 
dclxvinoise said:
I know that the Montana Senate and Congressmen are strongly opposed to this and are trying to block it because they are worried that "Montana's reputation will suffer." I wasn't aware that we even had a reputation to begin with. :lol:
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You ever heard of Brokeback Mountain? :rofl

I think the Gitmo terrorists should have to watch Brokeback Mountain at least a half dozen times as an introduction to good'ol fashioned Montana hospitality.

Or WOULD THAT be considered torture too?

.
 
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zimmer said:
You ever heard of Brokeback Mountain? :rofl

I think the Gitmo terrorists should have to watch Brokeback Mountain at least a half dozen times as an introduction to good'ol fashioned Montana hospitality.

Or WOULD THAT be considered torture too?

.
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Uhhh... Brokeback Mountain was in Wyoming.

A better movie about good ol' Montana hospitality is The Shining.

shining2.jpg
 
I was driving through Montana once and stopped in a old run down mineing town to ask directions and walk into this bar to make the inquiry. All of the people in there looked as if they were suffering from gunshot wounds. Bandages all over the place. The old man that answered my question did so though the hole in his thoat from throat cancer. As he was smoking a cigarette through the same hole...It reminded me of something out of a Steven King flick.
 
Quote: Originally Posted by Moon
Except we did just that during WWII. We held more than 300,000 German POWs in camps in the US until the war was over. You think they all got lawyers and trials?
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Indy said:
You are aware that we admitted that we were wrong afterward and apologized for our actions in additions to paying the survivors for what we did to them. Once again, if you don't bother to learn your own history then you are doomed to repeat it.
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Methinks you're confusing the German POW's with the Japanese-Americans that were interned in camps until the war was over.

We apologized for what we did to the Japanese-Americans and paid them reparations, but not the German POW's.
 
SpotsCat said:
Methinks you're confusing the German POW's with the Japanese-Americans that were interned in camps until the war was over.

We apologized for what we did to the Japanese-Americans and paid them reparations, but not the German POW's.
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German POWs were Germans, why would they deserve reparations?
 
American said:
German POWs were Germans, why would they deserve reparations?
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They wouldn't - that's my point.

I think that Indy confused the interned Japanese-Americans with the German POW's that Moon made reference to originally.
 
You ever heard of Brokeback Mountain?

I think the Gitmo terrorists should have to watch Brokeback Mountain at least a half dozen times as an introduction to good'ol fashioned Montana hospitality.

Or WOULD THAT be considered torture too?

SpotsCat said:
Uhhh... Brokeback Mountain was in Wyoming.

A better movie about good ol' Montana hospitality is The Shining.

shining2.jpg
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Well, close enough, the flick could still be used as an introduction to life on the range for our kind and loving terrorist friends.

.
 
Glinda said:
I can only tell you of my personal experiences on patrol with a close friend who was a Big Horn County deputy in Hardin for several years. When we came across a Res Indian wandering drunk through the streets, passed out in alleys, fighting, etc., we picked them up and brought them to a holding cell in Hardin. The res police were called and the individuals were released to their custody.

They were not arrested for public drunkenness.
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Then they don't have cross-jurisdiction like other reservations.


Glinda said:
I'd like to know more about this. Do you have a good website you can recommend?
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Actually, the best source is a book by Luana Ross, Ph.D., "Inventing the Savage, The Social Construction of Native American Criminality". She's gone through the history of Montana and shows in her book that the early lawmakers of Montana devloped laws that basically made any Indian activity illegal. They made anything to do with cultural/religious gatherings of Indians illegal as well. She has done several studies of the Montana legal system and a couple of the prisons.

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0292770847]Amazon.com: Inventing the Savage: The Social Construction of Native American Criminality: Luana Ross: Books[/ame]
 
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