When Vic Clarke's family moved to Whiteclay in 1993, his sons were 10, 8 and 6.
They stayed another 20 years.
Clarke, a longtime grocer, bought one of Whiteclay's two markets from a family that had owned it 55 years, moving his wife and children into the attached five-bedroom house.
The boys played hide-and-seek with friends in the store, and played catch with street people outside. They never felt unsafe, Clarke says.
"It's not like this is a bad area to live. ... We'd have (youth) baseball teams come stay in Whiteclay. Their parents wouldn't show up, but they'd let the kids come stay with us."
Clarke believes the media has made Whiteclay worse, portraying such a simple, negative image of the place that it drove non-alcohol-related businesses away.
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And he says Whiteclay beer sales have long served as a scapegoat for the Oglala Sioux Tribe — an easily identified, external enemy to deflect attention from tribal government's lack of will to address the reservation's internal problems.
"I blame the tribe for a lot of things," he says. "They want to place blame on everybody else."
Clarke
