From Indianz:

Writing in The New York Times, C. Jarrett Dieterle of Kevin R. Kosar, both of the non-partisan R Street Institute, point out that Andrew Jackson signed the ban into law in 1834. He was the president — much admired by the current occupant of the Oval Office — who forced tribes out of their homelands in the southeast U.S. during that same time frame.

“Indians, the thinking went, were uncivilized, incapable of enlightened self-rule and bound to be fleeced by white settlers,” Dieterle and Kosar write of a series of laws that imposed Washington’s will on Indian Country.

[…]

“During his testimony in support of repealing the distilling ban, Harry Pickernell, chairman of the Chehalis tribe, noted that the official policy of the United States government is to ‘support tribal self-determination and self-sufficiency,”’ which means that tribes must be able to provide for their members through economic development,” Dieterle and Kosar write of the leader of the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation.”Congress should let them open distilleries and do exactly that,” they conclude.

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