As 180-Year Distillery Ban Lifts, Tribes Weigh Alcohol Questions Anew
By Kris Maher
December 22, 2018
For the first time since at least 1834—when Andrew Jackson was president and the U.S. consisted of only 24 states—alcohol distilleries will be permitted on Native American lands.
A new law, signed by President Trump and supported by the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation in southwest Washington, aims to offer tribes a new way of generating jobs and revenue. But it also comes as many tribes are battling old stereotypes and real problems with alcoholism on reservations.
Chehalis Chairman Harry Pickernell, Sr., hailed undoing of the longstanding federal ban as a step toward bringing greater equality and sovereignty to tribes, along with new economic opportunity as craft distilling has taken off across the country amid increasing spirits consumption. Through August, the number of craft distillers grew by 15.5% over the prior year, according to the American Craft Spirits Association.
“Tribes around the country will now have the ability to move forward with projects to build and operate distilleries on their own lands,” Mr. Pickernell said.
The Chehalis tribe pushed for the law earlier this year when leaders realized that a plan to build a pub-style restaurant with a brewery and distillery on-site would be derailed by a section of the Trade and Intercourse Act of 1834, which prohibited distilleries from manufacturing certain alcohol in Indian country.
Restrictions on Native Americans producing and selling alcohol can be traced to the early decades of U.S. governance. In 1802, President Thomas Jefferson sought legislation banning alcohol in Indian country, and the prohibition of “ardent spirits” on tribal lands was strengthened in 1832, two years after Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act clearing the way for tribes’ mass expulsion from the southern U.S. Congress didn’t end the prohibition on consumption for Native Americans until 1953.
Winona LaDuke, an environmentalist and economist who is a member of the Ojibwe Tribe on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, said she favors lifting the distillery ban because it fosters Native American self-determination.
“It’s a sensitive issue. Our entire culture was poisoned by alcohol,” she said. “I feel like the tribal nations have the right to determine what their economies look like.”
Alcohol-related problems on many reservations have proved persistent, feeding into damaging stereotypes Native Americans have faced for centuries. A 2015 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the rate of alcohol-poisoning deaths among Native Americans was nearly six times higher than for the U.S. population generally.
The Oglala Sioux Tribe has long banned alcohol, with a few brief exceptions, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, which has high rates of alcoholism and related problems including fetal alcohol syndrome.
“I can’t imagine anyone on the Pine Ridge reservation is going to jump on this,” said Jon Ruybalid, an attorney in Nebraska, of the chance to open a distillery. Mr. Ruybalid founded a nonprofit called Whiteclay Makerspace, which is renovating a former store that once sold beer near the reservation into a space where artists, from quilters to painters, can work and sell their art.
One Native American family is already distilling spirits on a reservation in northern Wisconsin. Curtis Basina opened the Copper Crow Distillery on the Red Cliff Reservation of the Lake Superior Chippewa in April. He said he was able to do so because the distillery sits on land owned by his family.
“We lack so drastically for any type of private enterprise and Native-owned small business,” he said. “We said: Here’s an opportunity to capitalize on the tourist trade and get more tourist dollars into the area and in particular on the Red Cliff reservation.”
In his tasting room, Mr. Basina is currently serving a wheat-based vodka, and he is developing several whiskeys, an apple brandy and a rum, using local ingredients. He hopes to lure tourists who visit the nearby lighthouses and kayak on Lake Superior.
In Washington, the Chehalis tribe, which has about 1,000 members on its reservation, already employs about 1,500 people across a number of businesses, including the Lucky Eagle Casino and the Great Wolf Lodge Resort, which features an indoor water park and hotel. The restaurant and distillery will cost about $18 million to build and eventually employ 100 people, the tribe said.
Jeff Warnke, a spokesman for the Chehalis, said the tribe already wrestled with the decision about whether to sell alcohol on the reservation when it opened the casino in the 1990s. “What is acceptable and custom and OK on one reservation may not be on the next,” he said. “They’re truly sovereign nations.”