NOTICE: This story contains details about the plot of the movie, Killers of the Flower Moon.
The movie adaptation of David Grann’s book, Killers of the Flower Moon, premiered a few weeks ago, highlighting the Reign of Terror – the mass murder of the Osage tribe members for oil money in Oklahoma during the 1920s. It also portrays the systemic practice of white men manipulating Indigenous women into marriage, only to kill them and take their wealth.
Many Colorado Osages gathered to watch the movie, and while most are happy about its existence, they have some mixed reviews.
The Colorado Osages Facebook group was one of the groups that gathered to see a premiere of the movie on opening night. Natasha Lovato was impressed with how Director Martin Scorsese reflected Osage culture in the movie. Not only did he choose to film in Oklahoma, but he met with tribal members to ensure cultural accuracy – from the clothing to the language.
“It was really crazy seeing Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio speaking Osage,” said Lovato, an Osage tribal affiliate. “I think anyone walking out of it was speechless…you know, how often do you see a movie with a native language being spoken like that?”
During the making of the movie, Scorsese met with Geoffrey Standing Bear, the principal chief of the Osage tribe, to check all of those cultural details. Standing Bear was initially unsure if the film was just going to be another Hollywood film about Indigenous people, but he was impressed.
“We were just so on guard because of stereotypes, other people telling our story and we wanted to tell our story through them, through Hollywood,” Standing Bear said. “I believe watching it being filmed, meeting regularly with the producers and Marty (Scorsese), that they did everything they could to work with us. We did everything we could to work with them.”
Jay Kilbie Reed was also at the screening put on by the Facebook group. He brought his 14- and 10-year-old sons, who were just as impacted as he was.
“(I) knew the content would be a lot for a 10 year-old, but I thought it was important that he knows the story,” he said. “I didn't actually go to bed till about 2:00 that night, I was just laying there with my thoughts.”
Tink Tinker, a citizen of the Osage Nation and a professor emeritus of Indian Studies at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, also went to see the movie. He said one of his favorite scenes in the movie is when a storm erupts outside Mollie Burkhart’s home. Ernest, her soon-to-be husband, tries to shut the window, but she stops him and tells him to stop talking. She wants to hear the storm and connect with her ancestors.
“That’s deeply, deeply Osage,” he said. “At that moment, the movie was Indian.”
Though the film was met with much praise, many Osages still have their criticisms. Tinker would have liked Scorsese to portray the movie from an Indigenous perspective – like Mollie’s – rather than from Ernest Burkhart’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) perspective.
“Unfortunately, he's (Scorsese) a white man who's working with white money and selling our movie to a largely non-native audience, so he couldn't take the risk of putting the Osages in the center of the stage,” Tinker said. “And for us (Osages), that’s too bad. Osages are, once again, the pawns of the movie.”
It’s not the only criticism the movie has received. Some think the nearly 3 ½ hour movie is too long and it should have been broken up. Some theaters even included an intermission against the policies of Apple TV+.
Others critiqued that the movie focuses on a few murders, when there are plenty more that are uninvestigated or not talked about. Some say the movie did not do enough to share that Osages are still alive.
“Some of them (viewers), they’re just like, ‘We thought you were extinct.’ No, we're just right down the road here a couple of hours,” Standing Bear said. “It struck me as strange that they were looking at us like we were elves or hobbits or something. Well, here we are.”
Additionally, many Osages view the Reign of Terror as a taboo topic that is traumatic to talk about, and this movie went against that. Some tribal members still to this day do not discuss what happened.
Reed thought the movie did not explain the white “guardian” system enough. That was based on a law passed in the 20s that asked Osage people to “prove their competency” or be assigned a “competent” white guardian that would help manage – or rather, take – their wealth.
“There's one time where Mollie goes and declares she's incompetent and a lot of people had no idea what that meant,” Reed said.
That history is personal for Reed. His great, great uncle, John A. Kilbie, was not declared fully competent until he was 44, according to a letter Kilbie received from the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1925. He was declared competent at 35, but when he was 40, it was revoked because he was “misusing and squandering his funds,” the letter reads.
“That was a part where my family was very embarrassed about that,” Reed said. “As I get older, I'm like, a 40 year-old man should be able to spend his money however he wants, and (the fact) that the government could step in and do that is just mind boggling to me.”
But Reed and other Osages are happy the story is finally being shared, as many Americans are unaware. He’d often tell his family’s history to friends and he would be met with skepticism.
“Now I've had so many people that have texted me and been like, ‘This this Leonardo DiCaprio movie, is this the story you were telling me years ago?’” Reed said. “And I'm like, ‘yes!’ … I have told the story more in the past month than I have in the past like five years.”
This movie joins the recent rise in Indigenous stories and creators in the spotlight. But Standing Bear said action is key to keep lingering racism at bay.
“If you don't say nothing, you just sit back and watch it, you're complicit in murder,” he said. “You're complicit in what's going on. And you've got to understand, there's a true story. And it can happen again.”
Standing Bear, along with other Osages, hope this movie will serve as a catalyst for further learning about their history and will open the doors for future Indigenous stories in film. The movie is still in theaters and will soon be moved to Apple TV+.
