Crews working to finish $16 million, 60-bed nursing home in Whiteclay (Oglala Sioux Tribe)link added

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PAUL HAMMEL/THE WORLD-HERALD
Rising on the south side of Whiteclay, Nebraska, is a $16 million nursing home owned by the Oglala Sioux Tribe. The 60-bed home was first envisioned in the mid-1990s.


http://www.omaha.com/news/nebraska/crews-working-to-finish-million--bed-nursing-home-in/article_586d9c08-2fe9-5089-8521-1b5124f8721f.html

POSTED: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2015 12:00 AM | UPDATED: 12:11 AM, THU SEP 3, 2015.
By Paul Hammel / World-Herald bureau

WHITECLAY, Neb. — Nearly 20 years after plans were first discussed, a dream is rising amid the misery of this notorious border village.

Workers are busily striving to complete a $16 million nursing home on land owned by the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the south edge of this unincorporated village of about 20 people.

Whiteclay has been known as “the skid row of the Plains,” where street people openly sip malt liquor out of cans wrapped in paper bags, and some lie passed out amid trash and graffiti along the highway. It’s also where the equivalent of about 4 million cans of beer a year are sold by liquor stores, mostly to residents of the officially dry Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, just across the border.

But soon, a 60-bed nursing home will open, fulfilling a long-time ambition of the tribe to allow its eldest residents to live out their last years near the reservation instead of at nursing homes far away in Rapid City or Hot Springs. Between 85 and 90 jobs are expected to be created in an area known for relentless poverty and unemployment.

FULL story at link.