Martin Scorcese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, launched to rapturous reward in late October. Based mostly on David Grann’s best-selling novel of the identical title, the movie tells the story of ‘The Reign of Terror’—the serial homicide of the rich Osage Indians by their white ‘caretakers’ within the title of pilfering their rights to the oil below their reservation.
Every of the tribe’s 2,229 members acquired a “headright,” or share in oil cash that may very well be inherited however not offered. One particular person might inherit a number of headrights. Non-Native folks have been eligible to inherit headrights, so fortune-seeking white settlers might receive shares within the tribe’s oil rights by marrying into an Osage household or in any other case maneuvering their means onto an Osage’s checklist of heirs. Therefore all of the homicide.
Because the Osage’s wealth grew, the federal authorities took steps to impose restrictions on the tribe’s monetary autonomy. In 1921, Congress handed a measure requiring Osages to take a competency take a look at to handle their very own estates. These deemed incompetent by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (aka all of them) have been assigned a white guardian who oversaw their spending. That these guardians have been impossibly corrupt goes with out saying.
It’s not usually that Scorcese directs a blockbuster film whose fundamental battle facilities round an archaic property planning difficulty—and we’re not about to let this chance go to waste. So listed below are eight property planning classes from Killers of the Flower Moon:
