Dr. Rebekka Schlichting
In 2004, the New York Times reported 1 in 4 children were born with fetal alcohol syndrome on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Rebekka Schlichting led a group of college journalism students through an investigative multimedia report called Wounds of Whiteclay in America’s poorest county-Oglala, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The class won the 2017 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award and Grand Prize for uncovering hidden truths and scandals in the heart of America’s residual shameful treatment of Native Americans.
The data reported on by multiple respectable news outlets, the U.S. Census Bureau, the Oglala Tribe, H.U.D., the Bureau of Indian Affairs and more provided harmful and inconsistent data on population rates, poverty rates, homelessness and more. The population of Pine Ridge was estimated anywhere between 20 and 80 thousand. In the New York Times article mentioned earlier, the reporter who found 1 in 4 simply asked a worker at the local Indian Health Services what they thought the fetal alcohol syndrome rate was. The effects after the statistic was released were devastating in Pine Ridge.
Learn how these inconsistencies came to be in the ignored-third-world country in America’s own backyard and how Wounds of Whiteclay reporters overcame data gaps, gathered their own data and research and shed light on honest brutality and neglect of an entire “sovereign” nation.
