Gangsters are the villains in 'Killers of the Flower Moon,' but the biggest thief of Native American wealth was the US government
Retrieved on:
Tuesday, October 17, 2023
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White settlers targeted members of the Osage Nation to steal their land and the riches beneath it.
Key Points:
- White settlers targeted members of the Osage Nation to steal their land and the riches beneath it.
- From the early 1800s through the 1930s, official U.S. policy displaced thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral homes through the policy known as Indian removal.
- But it failed to account for these trust funds for decades, let alone pay Indians what they were due.
- From my perspective, “Killers of the Flower Moon” is just one chapter in a much larger story: The U.S. was built on stolen lands and wealth.
Westward expansion and land theft
- In fact, hundreds of Native nations already lived on those lands, each with their own unique forms of government, culture and language.
- In the early 1800s, eastern cities were growing and dense urban centers were becoming unwieldy.
- But the most pernicious land grab was yet to come.
The General Allotment Act
- Then, in 1887, it passed the General Allotment Act, also known as the Dawes Act.
- With this law, U.S. policy toward Indians shifted from separation to assimilation – forcibly integrating Indians into the national population.
- The General Allotment Act was designed to divvy up reservation lands into allotments for individual Indians and open any unallotted lands, which were deemed surplus, to non-Indian settlement.
- Once this happened, the allotment was subject to taxation and could immediately be sold.
Legal cultural genocide
- Indian allottees often had little concept of farming and even less ability to manage their newly acquired lands.
- Even after being confined to western reservations, many tribes had maintained their traditional governance structures and tried to preserve their cultural and religious practices, including communal ownership of property.
- In total, allotment removed 90 million acres of land from Indian control before the policy ended in the mid-1930s.
A measure of justice
- The federal government owns title to the lands, but holds them in trust for Indian tribes and individuals.
- These lands contain many valuable resources, including oil, gas, timber and minerals.
- But rather than acting as a steward of Indian interests in these resources, the U.S. government has repeatedly failed in its trust obligations.
- After 16 years of litigation, the suit was settled in 2009 for roughly US$3.4 billion.
Who are the wolves?
- “Can you find the wolves in this picture?” It’s clear from the movie that the town’s citizens are the wolves.
- But the biggest wolf of all is the federal government itself – and Uncle Sam is nowhere to be seen.