Oglala Man Burned Badly in Whiteclay Fire
Published in Indian Country Today in 2012. For more on topics like this, see my book, American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle....
“I’m in severe pain,” said
Brian Blue Bird, Oglala Lakota, from his hospital bed in a Greeley, Colorado, burn
unit (shown left). He was airlifted there via helicopter on March 7 after being badly burned
that day in a fire in Whiteclay, Nebraska, which adjoins the tribe’s Pine Ridge
Indian Reservation. When Blue Bird arrived at North Colorado
Medical Center, he was in serious
condition, according to Helen Lohnes, the hospital’s nursing supervisor; he is now listed in fair
condition, she said.
“The fire caught me,” said
Blue Bird, 51, an Army veteran and bystander in Whiteclay who recalled running
to get away from the flames, reportedly a prescribed burn set by the volunteer fire
department from nearby Rushville, Nebraska. “My clothes became engulfed in
flame, and I ran. I fell, got up and kept running till I made it to the road,
when I blacked out. I woke up and realized someone was hosing me off, then
blacked out again. Next time I came to, I was in the Indian Health Service
Hospital. I blacked out again and finally woke up here in Greeley.”
The conflagration took place
in an empty lot, shown right, near the abandoned buildings that form the northwestern boundary
of the tiny town. “There are old wooden buildings and a wooden fence there,”
said Blue Bird. “The flames must have jumped.”
After waking in the burn
unit, Blue Bird wasn’t able to see or speak for several days, though he could
hear. “My face and hands are burned, and my hair comes out in clumps,” he said.
“I’m very tired, and I have no appetite.” Each day, the hospital staff has
removed some of the many tubes that were running into his body, he said, and he
was expecting to undergo a skin-graft operation. He expressed concern for a
friend who had tried to extinguish the flames with his bare hands and also
sustained burns.
On March 13, a week after
the accident, Ray Nance, spokesperson for the Nebraska State Fire Marshal, said
his office had not heard of the incident, prompting Mark Vasina, award-winning
filmmaker and director of The Battle for Whiteclay, to say, “That just shows
how out-of-sight-out-of-mind Native Americans are for the powers that be in
Nebraska.” The following day, March 14, Nance confirmed that the office was aware
of the accident, adding, “As a general rule, we do try to
get out and like to be notified, but have no involvement or specifics on this
one.” He said fire chiefs “make the call” as to the causes of injury in a fire.
About any potential investigation, Nance said, “We [the fire marshal’s office] would
hope there would be a learning process.”
A request has been made for
a comment from the state fire marshal, and this story will be updated when it
is received. Neither the volunteer fire department nor the Rushville sheriff,
who patrols Whiteclay, responded to requests for a comment on the incident.
Whiteclay itself is an enclave
of little more than four ramshackle carry-out beer stores (one is shown at left) that flout
both Nebraska and Pine Ridge law by selling millions of cans of beer annually
right on the border of the dry Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Observers have
long called the town a center of a wide variety of lawlessness—from rape and
assault to sales to minors and food-stamp fraud. The tribe recently brought a
federal lawsuit to try to control the flow of alcohol from Whiteclay to the
reservation. “From whatever the cause, bottom line, Native Americans are
getting hurt and dying in Whiteclay,” said a tribal official.
Blue
Bird’s sister Carla Cheyenne, also
Oglala, went to Greeley to spend several days with her brother after he arrived
at North Colorado Medical Center. “He
told me he could hear his hair sizzling and see that his shirt and boots were
on fire,” she recalled.
Brian Blue Bird’s wife,
Patty White Bear Claws, Oglala (shown at top with him at the hospital), said the situation upset her badly. “It was a windy
day. What were they doing setting a fire on such a day?” A national online
weather service reports gusts as high as 44 miles per hour for that day in Whiteclay.
“I told him, next time they’re going to kill one of you. They don’t care
anything about Native Americans.”
Photo at top courtesy Mark Vasina; 2 photos of Whiteclay c. Joseph Zummo.