*Includes spoilers.
In the 1870s, the United States government forced a Native American tribe known as the Osage off their ancestral lands on the Great Plains to create space for white settlers. Relegated to a small, inarable reservation in northeast Oklahoma, the Osage – meaning “People of the Middle Waters” – would have followed their fellow tribes into poverty and destitution were it not for the fact that their new home, though lacking in crops and cattle, proved abundant in another, far more valuable resource: crude oil.
Leasing their land rights to prospectors at sky-rocketing rates, the Osage quickly became one of the richest communities in not just the U.S., but the entire world. Their shared wealth – an estimated $400 million by 1923 – transformed their Oklahoma reservation into a kind of parallel universe where conventional race relations were turned upside down: many Osage lived in mansions stocked with white maids and servants, and were driven around town by their own, white chauffeurs.
But while their newfound wealth gave the Osage respect and status, it also made them a target of violent crime. Instead of paying for the land rights, ambitious outsiders tried to inherit them by marrying into the family. One man, an already well-to-do rancher called William King Hale, went a step further, hiring killers to get rid of his in-laws so that he could have all their oil for himself. It’s these killings – the Osage Murders – that provide the setting for Martin Scorsese’s latest film, Killers of the Flower Moon.
Released on October 20 and based on a book of the same name by New Yorker journalist David Grann, the film stars Robert De Niro as Hale, a wolf in sheep’s clothing who presents himself as a friend and protector of the Osage while secretly plotting their extinction. Fellow …
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Author: Tim Brinkhof / High Times
