Oklahoma notable people12/8/2023 However, the law also sold “excess” land to white settlers, dramatically reducing the amount of land owned by Native nations. In 1887, for example, the Dawes Act broke tribal lands up and gave them to Native families with tribal claims willing to undergo cultural assimilation. These laws often did not protect Native interests-and instead served as ways for white settlers to seize and retain control over Native people and their ancestral lands. The government also historically considered Indian tribes to be dependent nations in need of federal protection: promoting laws designed to “protect,” not empower, Native people. Worth about $400 million dollars annually in modern currency by the 1920s, oil transformed the daily lives of the Osage people and turned them into what was then considered the richest nation on Earth.Īt the time, prevalent attitudes held that Native Americans were naive, primitive, and in need of white oversight lest they squander their wealth. The Osage Nation came into massive wealth after oil was discovered beneath its reservation in the 1890s. Here’s what happened, why some are still left unsolved, and how the crimes set the stage for modern law enforcement in the United States. But the film, based on David Grann’s bestselling 2017 book of the same name, isn’t all fiction.īorn in very real, misguided federal policies and fueled by the outsized desire of white settlers to profit from Native Americans’ land wealth, local greed resulted in the deaths of at least 60 wealthy Osage people-and possibly many more. Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese’s newest film, tells a story seemingly made for Hollywood-the tale of how white settlers used fatal means to seize the wealth of the Osage people of Oklahoma in the early 20th century.
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