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Whiskey and American Indians

James Abourezk, a former senator from South Dakota, has an interesting op-ed in the July 16, 2009 copy of the New York Times.

“Fourteen years after the Great Sioux Reservation was established in western South Dakota in 1868, President Chester Arthur issued an executive order creating a 50-square-mile buffer zone on its southern edge, in Nebraska. This was meant to prevent renegade whites from selling guns, knives and alcohol to Indians living on the reservation.

“The buffer zone was ratified as law …. But when Roosevelt became president, the liquor industry convinced him that the buffer zone should be abolished, which he did through an executive order in 1904. This move was, however, illegitimate from the start, because an act of Congress cannot legally be reversed by an executive order.”

He calls on President Obama to issue an executive order to reverse Roosevelt’s.

(Photo: “The Chieftan’s Return,” a nasty caricature from Puck Magazine, 1913. Credit: Library of Congress.)

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