Gangsters are the villains in 'Killers of the Flower Moon,' but the biggest thief of Native American wealth was the US government
White settlers targeted members of the Osage Nation to steal their land and the riches beneath it.
- 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.