Pearl Jam's Bassist Has Personally Funded More Than a Dozen Skateboard Parks in the Midwest

While the United States government doesn't openly assault Native Americans anymore, the problems and hardships that have been heaped on them over the centuries can still be felt on reservations across the country. Many of them, including South Dakota's Pine Ridge reservation, which I visited earlier this month, are poverty-stricken, and hopelessness, suicide, child diabetes, and alcoholism run rampant. Although no alcohol is sold on the Pine Ridge reservation, just across the Nebraska sits a three-block stretch of land called Whiteclay that looks like a set from The Walking Dead. The space consists of four dilapidated warehouses that act as taverns to service the Pine Ridge reservation. Outside each building droves of Native Americans stumbled about, drinking themselves to death. In 2010 the four liquor vendors sold five million cans of beer, a tremendous amount considering the size of the community.

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