A Native American tribe sued some of the world’s largest beer makers Thursday, claiming they knowingly contributed to devastating alcohol-related problems on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
The Oglala Sioux Tribe of South Dakota said it is demanding $500 million in damages for the cost of health care, social services and child rehabilitation caused by chronic alcoholism on the reservation.
The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court of Nebraska also targets four off-site beer stores in Whiteclay, a Nebraska Panhandle town that, despite having only about a dozen residents, sold nearly 5 million cans of beer in 2010. Most of its customers come from the Pine Ridge reservation on the town’s border.
Leaders of the tribe blame the Whiteclay businesses for chronic alcohol abuse and bootlegging on the reservation, where all alcohol is banned.
A spokeswoman for Anheuser-Busch InBev Worldwide, one of five beer companies named in the suit, said she was not yet aware of the lawsuit when contacted by The Associated Press early Thursday afternoon. Representatives for the four beer stores in Whiteclay declined comment or were unavailable.
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