Native American History Month

 With Lily Gladstone on the red carpets, I wanted to take a moment to know her history, and that of the movie she's campaigning.

She is of Piegan Blackfeet and Nez Pearce ancestry, having grown up on a Blackfeet reservation in Montana.  One of her great-great grandfathers is Red Crow, a Kainai Nation chief.

In the movie, she is Mollie Burkhart of the Osage.

In 1897, oil was discovered on the Osage reservation in Oklahoma.  The Department of Interior managed leases on land owned by the Osage through the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  Royalties were paid out, and by 1920, they were making millions of dollars.

So in 1921, Congress decided that the Osage could not properly manage their new wealth, and a new law required the courts appoint a guardian for each Osage with half-blood or more in ancestry.

White opportunists were on board, and some were later suspected of murdering their charges to gain the headrights.

In these early 1920's, eighteen Osage and three non-natives were reported murdered.

Anna Brown was the first to be found, and her death was initially ruled an accident.  A petty criminal later admitted to killing her, stating a local rancher, William Hale, hired him to do so.  He also implicated Brown's ex-boyfriend, Byron Burkhart.  He claimed they met at her sister Mollie's house, where he and Byron took her out intoxicated and shot her.

Brown's estate went to her mother, Lizzie Kyle, who was later killed, as well as her cousins, Charles Whitehorn and Henry Roan.

By 1925, at least sixty wealthy Osage had died, with their headrights inherited by their guardians, local white lawyers and businessmen.  The same year, Osage elders sought assistance from the BOI.  Investigator Tom White was well aware of the local police corruption, so he used undercover agents.

They soon discovered Mollie Burkhart was already being poisoned by her husband, Ernest, as they had inherited all of the headrights from her family.  She survived, and later died in 1937.

Ernest was convicted of murder and conspiracy in 1926, sentenced to life.  But in 1937 he was paroled.  He then went to the home of Lillie Burkhart and stole $7,000 in valuables.  His parole was revoked, but he was released again in 1959.  In 1966, he applied for a pardon and it was given.  He died in 1986.

***

I also wanted to touch on reactions to the movie - the book is more about the FBI whereas Martin Scorcese wanted to show more of the Osage perspective.  But it's still a white man's story.

Devery Jacobs, who starred in Reservation Dogs, had this to say:

"Indigenous people exist beyond our grief, trauma, and atrocities.  Our pride for being Native, our languages, cultures, joy and love are way more interesting and humanizing than showing the horrors white man inflicted on us."