A 60-bed nursing home, with room to expand to 80 is soon to open in August 2012 in Whiteclay. The ground breaking ceremony was held last month.

South Dakota’s Oglala Sioux Tribe has already started its construction across the Nebraska border in a village at the center of a booze dispute.

The tribe’s consultant, Gary Ruse, told NET Radio there are 200 to 300 tribe members in Midwest nursing homes who want to return to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for their final years. Oglala Sioux Tribal President John Yellow Bird Steele agreed there is a great need for the facility.

“We’ve got a lot of elderly here. We’ve got a lot of elderly out in nursing homes, lonely, no one to visit,” he said. “We want to bring them home.”