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A century after the Osage murders, ‘guardians’ still harm American Indians

“Killers of the Flower Moon” highlights the U.S. government’s role in a historical injustice. But those concerned with modern poverty should not lose sight of the elephant in today’s room. Oppressive regulatory oversight means paper rights for American Indians, paper rights mean dead capital, and dead capital means poverty. We can’t change the past, but the federal government should cut today’s white tape.

-Dominic Parker is an economist at the University of Wisconsin and the Ilene and Morton Harris Visiting Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Adam Crepelle is a professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.