Anti-alcohol activists are pleased with a New Year’s Eve protest of beer sales in Whiteclay, as 3 of the 4 stores with beer licenses closed early despite only 15 individuals taking part in the protest.

Spokesman Olowan Martinez says the stores are normally open until midnight, but that advance word of the protest and the Oglala Sioux tribal police setting up an alcohol checkpoint just across the state line, 2 had already shut their doors when protesters arrived at 9 p.m., and a third closed around 10 p.m.

Martinez…who lives on the reservation in Porcupine…says protesters marched through Whiteclay 3 times while local law enforcement from Nebraska keeping watch in town and tribal police just across the stateline and reservation border.

Another protester from the reservation…Autumn Two Bulls of Oglala…says Whiteclay was unusually quiet when the small group arrived…describing it as being “like a ghost town.” Two Bulls says she liked seeing that, and seeing only a handful of customers going into State Line Liquor…the store that did stay open till midnight.

Olowan Martinez says the protesters were very grateful to the tribal police for their cooperation on New Year’s Eve, explaining that once people the officers were working with them, “the energy was good (and) things went really well.”

She estimates that fewer than 50 cars went through Whiteclay on New Year’s Eve, with officers at the checkpoint searching everyone who was coming back through to the reservation.

Whiteclay has only about a dozen residents, but the 4 stores with beer licenses sold the equivalent of 4.3 million 12-ounce cans of beer last year. Critics blame them for most of the alcoholism and bootlegging problems on the reservation….which is officially dry.