After no clean drinking water for 4 years, this Native American tribe wants more than sympathy

Native American communities often lack the resources to upgrade drinking and wastewater infrastructure. The Santee Sioux Nation in Nebraska is an extreme example — living without safe drinking water for four years.
Over the hills of northern Nebraska and along the banks of the Missouri River lies the village of Santee on the Santee Sioux Nation Reservation.

Home to fewer than 1,000 residents, it’s isolated from Nebraska’s major population centers and almost an hour from the nearest Walmart in Yankton, South Dakota.

For the past four years, the reservation has not had access to safe drinking water.

And for four years, the tribe has been unable to afford the necessary infrastructure to fix the problem.

Kameron Runnels, tribal vice chairman for the Santee Sioux, has been working on securing funding from the state and federal government since the Environmental Protection Agency's initial no-drink order in 2019.