It was a wretched place.

The lone road running through the tiny hamlet on the Nebraska-South Dakota border was strewn with scores of convulsing and immobilized bodies — virtually all of them Lakota Sioux natives.

The visual impact was that of a battlefield. Many had passed out, overcome by the power of high gravity malt liquor. Others were bleeding, their arms and torsos gored by broken bottles during drunken combat. Still others were curled up in a fetal position from the trauma of a just-completed rape.

Whiteclay was the place you went to die.

Purpose-built to supply alcohol to the Natives, the town’s poison spigot had flowed unchecked by either law or conscience for more than 115 years.

As horse-drawn wagons were replaced by larger, more efficient semi-trucks — fourteen wheels of rolling misery as some called them — Whiteclay’s per capita alcohol sales soon rose to the highest in the nation.

But the pain did not end there. Under the cover of night, bootleggers transported Whiteclay booze onto the adjacent Pine Ridge Indian Reservation where its uninhibited consumption led to one in four children being born with fetal alcohol syndrome. Life expectancy plummeted to the second-lowest in the western hemisphere, trailing only Haiti.

To local intercessors like Norma Blacksmith and Marsha BonFleur, the fact this torment had persisted for more than a century was appalling beyond words. If the store owners, police, and political leaders were unmoved by the cries of their fellow human beings, it was time to speak to God.

Deep into the night and during daily prayer walks down the streets of Whiteclay the two women cried out for justice. It was time for transformation.

The first rumblings of divine response came in early 2015. In cities miles away, God was rearranging Nebraska’s political furniture — and doing so in ways nobody could have foreseen.

Less than two years later, on a mid-spring morning, Whiteclay’s prayer warriors stood at the side of the road and wept. Not out of sadness, but over a remarkable and joyous scene that would soon be reported by news outlets across the nation.

Now you, too, can witness the story of what happened that glorious day via a new Sentinel Group documentary set for release in early 2025. More than nine years in the making,The Gates of Whiteclay, is a powerful reminder that the word “impossible” only makes God smile.

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