Speaker 1: Oh. This is a story about land and oil, about family,
Speaker 1: about wealth, about the stories we passed down and the
Speaker 1: stories we don't. It's about a Native American reservation and
Speaker 1: the people who own the land today. This story took
Speaker 1: me to northern Oklahoma, to os Age County on the
Speaker 1: border with Kansas, one and a half million acres covered
Speaker 1: in blue stem grass with pools of oil below the ground,
Speaker 1: and that oil a century ago it brought tremendous wealth
Speaker 1: to some of the people who lived here, at least
Speaker 1: for a while. Hello, this is Tara Dameron. She's a
Speaker 1: citizen of the os Age Nation. Tears in charge of
Speaker 1: an oth Age history center called the White Hair Memorial
Speaker 1: outside of a small town called Hominy. The building is
Speaker 1: an old house shrouded by trees, tucked away from the
Speaker 1: miles and miles of blue stem grass you see from
Speaker 1: the highway. And I'm here because I wanted Tear to
Speaker 1: tell me what she remembers from June of two thousand nine.
Speaker 1: It is hot. I just remember just having to, let
Speaker 1: you know, get myself prepared for the heat. And June
Speaker 1: for o s Ages is a really busy month. That's
Speaker 1: when we have our Ilanshka our ceremonies, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a reunion because you know, you get to
Speaker 1: see a lot of your family members, and you know
Speaker 1: a lot of people will come home for that and
Speaker 1: come back to that and make a point to be there.
Speaker 1: Tara has been going to the June ceremonies, the big
Speaker 1: meals and traditional dances since she was a kid. But
Speaker 1: I wanted to know what she remembered about one specific
Speaker 1: day from that month, June. It was a Thursday. It
Speaker 1: was the start of the Homedy dances. You know, everybody's
Speaker 1: sort of keyed up and excited. Everybody was talking about
Speaker 1: the list and his names were on it the list.
Speaker 1: This is why I wanted to talk to Tara. I'm
Speaker 1: a reporter. I'd gotten a tip about one of the
Speaker 1: names on that list. She mentioned the name of a
Speaker 1: prominent family you might have heard of. We'll get to that,
Speaker 1: but first you should know that this list, when it
Speaker 1: came out, it was a big deal. Tara had been
Speaker 1: hearing about it all day at lunch her parents house
Speaker 1: earlier while her dad read the paper. The first time
Speaker 1: she heard was from her uncle, Charles Pratt. He called
Speaker 1: her that morning. Excited, baby was his term of affection
Speaker 1: and he's like maybe the list came out, you know,
Speaker 1: like what, But he was like a little kid. Charles
Speaker 1: was in the middle of a lawsuit, and his lawsuit
Speaker 1: is the reason this list became public. Charles and his
Speaker 1: co plaintiffs were suing the United States government over how
Speaker 1: it is managing something called the O Sage Mineral Estate.
Speaker 1: The mineral of state dates back more than a hundred years.
Speaker 1: The US had been breaking up Native reservations, trying to
Speaker 1: privatize the land and take it out of the control
Speaker 1: of tribal nations. But when it came to the O
Speaker 1: s Age Reservation, everything underground, the mineral rights the oil,
Speaker 1: the O s Age Nation fought to hold onto it,
Speaker 1: and they succeeded. Congress passed a law in nineteen o six,
Speaker 1: and the mineral rights to the reservation were put into
Speaker 1: one big pot that was divided into shares like a corporation.
Speaker 1: The shareholders were two thousand, two hundred nine citizens. Each
Speaker 1: share would come to be called a head right, and
Speaker 1: everyone who had a head right was entitled to some
Speaker 1: of the money from oil and gas drilling in the area.
Speaker 1: It's money from the mineral estate set aside for the
Speaker 1: O s Age Indians that our leaders set up to
Speaker 1: help us provide a financial foundation. The government paid out
Speaker 1: royalties to head right holders each quarter. Over the years,
Speaker 1: most shares have been divided into smaller and smaller fractions.
Speaker 1: Pasta descendants, head rights are a lot more than just
Speaker 1: a check in the mail for oil money. For a
Speaker 1: long time, the federal government didn't even consider someone a
Speaker 1: citizen of the os Age nation unless they had a
Speaker 1: head right or a fraction of one. They couldn't vote
Speaker 1: in O s Age elections without them. When Charles Pratt
Speaker 1: and his co plaintiffs filed that lawsuit, they were arguing
Speaker 1: the government was doing a bad job of managing all
Speaker 1: the money that belonged to os Age head right holders.
Speaker 1: They wanted the US to provide an accounting where all
Speaker 1: this money oh Stage money was going and had gone
Speaker 1: over the last hundred years. For a long time, the
Speaker 1: way the US government managed this trust has been wrapped
Speaker 1: in secrecy. Even the people who were meant to benefit
Speaker 1: from the trust couldn't see the financial details. The government
Speaker 1: had long kept the names of head right holders private too,
Speaker 1: but as part of that lawsuit, a court ordered the
Speaker 1: government to produce a list the names of people, churches,
Speaker 1: oil companies and other groups that were not oth age,
Speaker 1: but it somehow ended up with the share of the
Speaker 1: mineral estate. Nearly two thousand names made public because of
Speaker 1: a surprise decision by the court that all those non
Speaker 1: sages would need to be sued too. This was the
Speaker 1: first time in over a hundred years that we use
Speaker 1: O sages were able to see in black and white
Speaker 1: an official list, you know, from the government, of all
Speaker 1: these NONO sages that had head rights. M let's see yea.
Speaker 1: A local paper had published the list in full that morning.
Speaker 1: The paper was The Big Heart Times. It's tagline reads
Speaker 1: the only newspaper in the world that really gives the deadly.
Speaker 1: So this is dated Thursday, June eight, two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: the Big Heart Times, and the headline raids suit names,
Speaker 1: not O stage shareholders. The list of defendants is vast,
Speaker 1: one thousand, seven nine people and entities. That includes ranchers, lawyers, churches, schools,
Speaker 1: and even a former Library of Congress who wants to
Speaker 1: join the Communist Party. That's an amazing So in addition
Speaker 1: to individuals, there were corporations, there were a number of churches,
Speaker 1: a lot of trust. You see that a lot. Jean Harlowe,
Speaker 1: the hiss And Memorial Center, University of Oklahoma, the University
Speaker 1: of Texas as several oil companies are on there. Of course,
Speaker 1: the Drummonds were on there. Um they're a big ranch family.
Speaker 1: Hand O Sage County. Some of these names Tera told
Speaker 1: me we're pretty surprising. The family of Jean Harlowe, a
Speaker 1: famous Hollywood actress in the nineteen thirties. The his Some
Speaker 1: Memorial Center, an institution that was forced to shut down
Speaker 1: decades ago because staff were accused of abusing the intellectually
Speaker 1: disabled patients who lived there. Like, how in the world
Speaker 1: did they get ahold of os Age head rights? Which
Speaker 1: is the next logical question. You know, anyone looking at
Speaker 1: that lift would ask, we do know how some non
Speaker 1: oth ages would have ended up with head rights for
Speaker 1: a long time. They could be sold to no oth ages.
Speaker 1: Sometimes oth ages use their head right share as an
Speaker 1: investment for a stake in a company. If you scan
Speaker 1: through the list with all the churches and nonprofits, it
Speaker 1: seems likely that a lot of them received head rights
Speaker 1: from oz Age citizens who died and left them as
Speaker 1: a charitable donation. But there was another way non oth
Speaker 1: Ages got head rights. For a long time, someone outside
Speaker 1: the Osage Nation could inherit one if they married an
Speaker 1: oth s Age man or woman and that person died.
Speaker 1: And when oil was discovered in Osage County and head
Speaker 1: rights became incredibly valuable, os Ages who had them became targets.
Speaker 1: Often you'll hear that time the referred to as the
Speaker 1: Reign of Terror, when dozens of Osages were targeted and
Speaker 1: widespread violent schemes. These weren't just one off crimes. It
Speaker 1: was an entire criminal conspiracy led by white people who
Speaker 1: would marry Osages for their head rights and then kill them.
Speaker 1: And what I hope you'll see as we get into
Speaker 1: this is that the Reign of Terror left a profound
Speaker 1: impact on the Osage Nation. It devastated the community at
Speaker 1: family's apart, and the effects are still present today. Terra says,
Speaker 1: for a long time, the Rain of Terror just wasn't discussed.
Speaker 1: It was too painful and the risk of becoming a
Speaker 1: target again seemed too high. So when this lift came out,
Speaker 1: people started asking questions. They were asking family members, So
Speaker 1: it started sort of this unearthing of this sort of big, huge,
Speaker 1: giant secret that you know O Stages or local people
Speaker 1: that you know grew up in a Toronto Stage County
Speaker 1: sort of always knew or suspected it was huge. It
Speaker 1: was a significant moment. Think about that nineteen sixty, two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine. Imagine being defrauded all those years. I
Speaker 1: think you're going to be pissed, right, Yeah. Yeah. Para
Speaker 1: laughed sometimes when she talks about the but I don't
Speaker 1: get the sense she thinks it's funny. There's this outrageousness
Speaker 1: to it all that the Osage Nations Trustee, the US
Speaker 1: federal government is keeping this information from the very people
Speaker 1: this trust is for, even after that system created one
Speaker 1: of the worst tragedies in the O s Age Nation's history.
Speaker 1: Terris says when the list came out and people started
Speaker 1: talking about where those head rights ended up, it gave
Speaker 1: more momentum to what her uncle Charles was saying in
Speaker 1: his lawsuit that the federal government wasn't doing a good
Speaker 1: job managing OH Sage money. It absolutely made made us
Speaker 1: start to question and wonder and ask, and you know
Speaker 1: all these things that someone like in a shareholder of corporation,
Speaker 1: those would be normal things, financial reports, and you know,
Speaker 1: we have a right to know where our money is going.
Speaker 1: Just so you know. I've asked the government agency that
Speaker 1: manages the mineral estate, the Bureau of Indian Affair, about
Speaker 1: some of the names on that list, like his him,
Speaker 1: where those checks are going and who's getting paid, especially
Speaker 1: if the organization literally doesn't exist anymore. A spokesman said
Speaker 1: they don't comment on issues involving ongoing litigation. When it
Speaker 1: comes to head rights, the federal government tends to say
Speaker 1: it's a matter of privacy that the protections in place
Speaker 1: for o s Age head right holders are the same
Speaker 1: ones in place for non os Age ones. It's important
Speaker 1: to remember that when it comes to the os Age
Speaker 1: nation and tribal nations across the country, the United States
Speaker 1: isn't just a bureaucrat. It's a trustee, a relationship born
Speaker 1: from the treaties that were signed and often forced more
Speaker 1: than the century ago. It means the federal government has
Speaker 1: a fiduciary obligation to tribal nations and tribal citizens whose money, land,
Speaker 1: and mineral rights are held in trust by the US
Speaker 1: on their behalf. And that fiduciary obligation it's a big deal.
Speaker 1: Consider er. The highest degree of duty that exists in
Speaker 1: the American legal system. What I always tell people is
Speaker 1: that that government that relationship can't end. Like we can't
Speaker 1: divorce each other, you know what I mean, Like it's
Speaker 1: it is what it is. We can't just say, you
Speaker 1: know what, we really don't like you, um and we
Speaker 1: want we want someone else to manage our money. It
Speaker 1: doesn't it doesn't work like that. So we're sort of
Speaker 1: we are stuck with each other for better or worse.
Speaker 1: Over the last several decades, the US has settled multiple
Speaker 1: lawsuits for falling short of its trust duty when it
Speaker 1: comes to managing Native American assets. That includes a case
Speaker 1: the Osage Nation brought more than twenty years ago that
Speaker 1: the U s settled in twenty eleven for three d
Speaker 1: eighty million dollars. The settlement paid out to all head
Speaker 1: right holders sage or not, meaning someone with one head
Speaker 1: right received a little over a hundred fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: But Terra says the fact that NONO Sages continue to
Speaker 1: get head right money shows the US is still falling
Speaker 1: short of its obligation to the O s Age Nation.
Speaker 1: When Terra's uncle Charles died, she took his spot as
Speaker 1: one of the plaintiffs on the case. They've been successful
Speaker 1: in getting a partial accounting, but the lawsuit is still ongoing. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the os Age Nation has been working to get federal
Speaker 1: legislation passed so that some of those head rights can
Speaker 1: be returned. Today, a little over a quarter of all
Speaker 1: head rights are owned by people or groups that are
Speaker 1: not O s Age. When you account for inflation, head
Speaker 1: rights owned by non os Ages have paid out half
Speaker 1: a billion dollars over the last few decades. It's not
Speaker 1: their money, it's our money. It's not Gane Hardlo's money,
Speaker 1: it's not his a memorial center. It's it's our money.
Speaker 1: You know, those those original lattas and their descendants. The
Speaker 1: story starts with head rights, but it brought me far
Speaker 1: beyond that, because when I started asking about how a
Speaker 1: bunch of non os ages ended up on that list,
Speaker 1: I found another story too, a story about a whole
Speaker 1: system that worked to move oc age wealth into the
Speaker 1: hands of white people, A system that shapes to his
Speaker 1: land and influence here today, a system set up by
Speaker 1: the federal government. You're listening to in trust, I'm Rachel
Speaker 1: Adams heard. I want to tell you more about that
Speaker 1: list of non os Age head right holders. But to
Speaker 1: really understand what it meant for that list to go public,
Speaker 1: you have to know how the os Age Nation got
Speaker 1: to its reservation and how the head right system was created.
Speaker 1: For a long time, o s Age Territory stretched across
Speaker 1: the land that would eventually make up Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri,
Speaker 1: and Arkansas. But the US government pressured the os Age
Speaker 1: Nation into a series of treaties until it was left
Speaker 1: with just a small fraction of that land, a reservation
Speaker 1: in Kansas. But after a conflict with white settlers on
Speaker 1: that reservation, the os Age Nation went south to what
Speaker 1: would later become os Age County. The tribe had soldier
Speaker 1: lands in Kansas use that money to buy this reservation.
Speaker 1: This is Jim Gray. He was chief of the os
Speaker 1: Age Nation from two thousand to two thousand. We didn't
Speaker 1: just get moved here by treaty. We bought it. We
Speaker 1: had a property title to it. The os Age Nation
Speaker 1: purchased its new reservation from the Cherokee Nation in the seventies.
Speaker 1: Jim told me that property title would prove to be
Speaker 1: massively important because not long after the os Age Nation
Speaker 1: moved the US government wanted to change things again. The
Speaker 1: government wanted to take the Sage Reservation, which the nation
Speaker 1: as a whole, health the title too, and parceled out
Speaker 1: to individuals Age citizens instead. This was called allotment. This
Speaker 1: individual o Sage receiving an individual allotment. That was new.
Speaker 1: We never went down that road of individual landowners, even
Speaker 1: in Missouri or Arkansas. It was all everyone benefited from
Speaker 1: the collective ownership of this land, and they whatever bounty
Speaker 1: came from it was spread with all the people. Allotment
Speaker 1: started on a lot of Native land after Congress passed
Speaker 1: the DAWs General Allotman Act in seven. This was part
Speaker 1: of a broader, deliberate and violent strategy to try and
Speaker 1: assimilate Native communities, kill off their traditions and lifestyles, and
Speaker 1: make their land available for white settlement. According to the book,
Speaker 1: Uneven ground At reduced Native American controlled land from two
Speaker 1: billion acres to one fifty million acres. But the oth
Speaker 1: Age Nation was initially exempt from the DAWs Act and
Speaker 1: allotment because of that property title Jim mentioned. So when
Speaker 1: they tried to a lot the oth Sage lands, they
Speaker 1: couldn't do it without our consent. Where they could just
Speaker 1: do whatever they wanted with everyone else's land. That was
Speaker 1: an Indian territory they had. The tribe had some political
Speaker 1: rights that protected their property interest, negotiating power, but not
Speaker 1: not enough to stop it all together. Statehood was coming.
Speaker 1: There's no way you can stop that. And the tribal
Speaker 1: leader at that time, James Bigheart, who was a brilliant
Speaker 1: man and way ahead of his time, did what he thought.
Speaker 1: You know, what he thought was the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: Is so we cut a deal. Okay, a lot to
Speaker 1: surface lay, but the subsurface remains as a mineral state.
Speaker 1: This was a savvy and unique deal that O s
Speaker 1: Age leaders negotiated. It's all laid out in a law
Speaker 1: called the nineteen o six os Age Allotment Act, and
Speaker 1: that law is where head rates come from, all those
Speaker 1: shares of all the oil and gas rights beneath the land.
Speaker 1: The year after that law, Oklahoma became a state and
Speaker 1: it established O Sage County directly on top of the
Speaker 1: O s Age Reservation. There were already some white families
Speaker 1: living there, traders and cattlemen, but after allotment, more and
Speaker 1: more settlers moved there and started trying to get land
Speaker 1: and head rights for themselves. Starting in the nineteen teens,
Speaker 1: head rights became incredibly valuable. Oil production took off and
Speaker 1: money was pouring in. A lot of os Age families
Speaker 1: could afford the finest cars, the nicest furniture. There were
Speaker 1: tales of this wealth across the country, many of them exaggerated.
Speaker 1: In June, the os Age Nation made the New York
Speaker 1: Times the headline os Age our richest people in all
Speaker 1: caps and then greatest per capital wealth in world results
Speaker 1: from oil deal. But that wealth and all that attention
Speaker 1: it brought tragedy. There was the dominant society's view that
Speaker 1: these savages weren't entitled to anything, and if they got something,
Speaker 1: then it was within your right as a white person
Speaker 1: to take it. And that mentality spilled out into the
Speaker 1: entire society. In an inspector from the Department of Interior
Speaker 1: was sent to oth Age County to report on the
Speaker 1: explosion of wealth. Two years later, that inspector, a man
Speaker 1: named hs Trailer, submitted to Congress of racist tirade against
Speaker 1: os Age is and how they spent their money. He
Speaker 1: called it sinful, and he said if something wasn't done
Speaker 1: about o s Age wealth, then quote their everlasting damnation
Speaker 1: is as sure and certain as the daily sinking of
Speaker 1: the sun in the West. He neglected to mention the
Speaker 1: uptick and crime against O. S Age head right holders.
Speaker 1: No acknowledgment that this money belonged to O. S Age
Speaker 1: citizens and they could do whatever they wanted with it,
Speaker 1: or that OH Stage spending was largely in line with
Speaker 1: that of white Americans in the same income bracket. These
Speaker 1: guys were friends of the Native American community. And the
Speaker 1: fact that these particular Native Americans ended up with a
Speaker 1: credibly wealthy something something's wrong with the system, you know.
Speaker 1: And if one of them got killed and someone sought
Speaker 1: justice in the state courts, they didn't get it. Do
Speaker 1: you think these guys lost any sleep over it. It's
Speaker 1: hard to communicate the full breadth and impact of the
Speaker 1: reign of terror, but you can't understand the importance of
Speaker 1: the list without knowing that this was a tragedy that
Speaker 1: many white people in Osage County were complicit in. Groups
Speaker 1: of white people conspired to manipulate and murder O s
Speaker 1: Age citizens. The FBI confirmed as much nearly a hundred
Speaker 1: years ago. O Stages were shot, they were poisoned, their
Speaker 1: cars were run off the road. One couple's house was
Speaker 1: blown up, and it was just like a cottage industry
Speaker 1: of finding different ways to off O Sages. And in
Speaker 1: all those cases there was always some non Indian benefiting
Speaker 1: from that, whether it was a guardian or spouse, creditor, whatever.
Speaker 1: We don't have exact numbers on how many people were
Speaker 1: targeted then, because what researchers have found is that a
Speaker 1: lot of these cases were investigated, a lot of times
Speaker 1: they were covered up. Official figures put it somewhere between
Speaker 1: twenty four and six oth Ages who were killed in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen twenties, but at least one federal investigator
Speaker 1: thought it could be in the hundreds. Corruption was rampant
Speaker 1: and local officials often couldn't be trusted, but the reign
Speaker 1: of terror wasn't limited to murderer. It was shady financial
Speaker 1: maneuvering on behalf of bankers and lawyers, intricate schemes involving
Speaker 1: probates and powers of attorney. Sometimes it was more blunt,
Speaker 1: getting someone drunk and tricking them into signing away their land.
Speaker 1: It was like every institution that existed in O Sage
Speaker 1: Nation at the time, or OUs Age County, whoever you
Speaker 1: want to call it was not there for any other
Speaker 1: purpose but to separate the O Sages from their land
Speaker 1: and their money. That's how O Sages fell. It's worth
Speaker 1: remembering the US legal system, the English language, This was
Speaker 1: all almost totally new to a lot of oth Ages
Speaker 1: at the time. The government, specifically the Department of Interior's
Speaker 1: Office of Indian Affairs, they were supposed to make sure
Speaker 1: that didn't lead to exploitation, but they didn't do a
Speaker 1: very good job. What the government chose to do was
Speaker 1: label O Stage citizens incompetent, that was the official word
Speaker 1: they used, incompetent, and put white people in charge of
Speaker 1: their finances. This was an official system. At one point,
Speaker 1: hundreds of Stages and other Native Americans were by default
Speaker 1: appointed a guardian, an educated white person, usually a lawyer
Speaker 1: or a businessman, who had managed their money for them,
Speaker 1: a paternalistic policy steeped in racism that white politicians justified
Speaker 1: as a way to protect Native Americans from getting swindled
Speaker 1: and stolen from But often those guardians were in on
Speaker 1: the very schemes the government said it was trying to prevent.
Speaker 1: We don't really see them as incompetent. Full rules who
Speaker 1: lost everything. We see him more as a horrible victim
Speaker 1: of an of a greedy society that while they were
Speaker 1: trying to learn to walk in both worlds, this world
Speaker 1: just came and stomped on them. You know. Some of
Speaker 1: them survived, some of them didn't, you know. But it's
Speaker 1: a difficult, difficult chapter in our tribe's history that unfortunately
Speaker 1: has created a form of generational trauma, and and not
Speaker 1: so much in the way that you think, but that
Speaker 1: it robbed us of a generational wealth. A single head
Speaker 1: right today, adjusted for inflation, would have paid out about
Speaker 1: four million dollars over the last hundred years. Could you
Speaker 1: imagine if if we were able to hang on to
Speaker 1: that fourth of the head rights that have gone out
Speaker 1: of the tribe, and those dollars got reinvested in our
Speaker 1: children's education or buying land, or building the land up,
Speaker 1: or protecting our tribal community and in ways that we
Speaker 1: can imagine, and have the children raised in that environment
Speaker 1: do the same in their lives and have those head
Speaker 1: right moneyies coming in and they're building wealth. But that
Speaker 1: was never gonna happen to us because of all these
Speaker 1: different interests from the outside that were bent on either
Speaker 1: exploiting the laws, or bending the law or ignoring the
Speaker 1: law to get away with whatever they would needed to
Speaker 1: do to get their hands on the money. It's hard
Speaker 1: to know how many head rights left oh s Age
Speaker 1: ownership because of the reign of terror. A big part
Speaker 1: of that is because very few people were investigated back then,
Speaker 1: much less convicted. The most famous conviction from that time
Speaker 1: was of a rancher named William K. Hale, who was
Speaker 1: accused of masterminding the murders of several oh s Ages.
Speaker 1: He only got caught because the oth Age Nation hired
Speaker 1: the FBI to look into the murders dollars out of
Speaker 1: pocket to get federal authority used to investigate. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: took a long time to get this guy behind bars.
Speaker 1: He had vast resources at his disposal that you know,
Speaker 1: manipulated the media that influenced the judges, influenced juries, influenced
Speaker 1: the prosecutors, and public sentiment was all in his favor
Speaker 1: at the time. Eventually, Hale was found guilty of just
Speaker 1: one of the murderers he allegedly ordered. He was convicted
Speaker 1: for eating and abetting the killing of an O s
Speaker 1: Age man named Henry Ron Ron was shot in the
Speaker 1: head in his car. He was Jim's great grandfather, being
Speaker 1: the last of seven kids. I guess mom was running
Speaker 1: out of names to give us. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: she named me James Brown Gray. I think it was
Speaker 1: her way of making me aware of that past. The
Speaker 1: mayor of Fairfax said Ron considered Hale a friend of
Speaker 1: his best friends. But there isn't much surviving knowledge about
Speaker 1: Henry Brown's life outside of the FBI files. Looking back,
Speaker 1: and I think about how many O sage families just
Speaker 1: stopped talking about the Rain of Terror for fear it
Speaker 1: would bring about some tragic consequences to their lives. People
Speaker 1: just stopped talking about it. Mom grew up in environment,
Speaker 1: and since she didn't really talk about it that much,
Speaker 1: you could see this generational trauma that it cost. My
Speaker 1: education is whatever I read, it wasn't any oral stories
Speaker 1: that were passed town. It wasn't until the nineties, when
Speaker 1: Jim was a young adult that he would ask his
Speaker 1: mom about the Reign of Terror. Jim had just read
Speaker 1: a new book from Washington Post journalist Dennis mccauliffe Jr.
Speaker 1: It's called The Deaths of Simple Bolton. I talked to
Speaker 1: her about it we had one conversation. In the book mccaulliffe,
Speaker 1: whose osage himself, investigates the murder of his grandmother, a
Speaker 1: woman named Sybil Bolton. Mccauliffe had grown up believing his
Speaker 1: grandmother died from kidney disease, but what mcculloff found was
Speaker 1: that she was murdered, shot in front of her home,
Speaker 1: likely by her guardian, her white stepfather. While the FBI
Speaker 1: was focused on getting hail, her stepfather was after her
Speaker 1: head right. One of the things that startled me about
Speaker 1: reading Dennis's book was that he was writing about killings
Speaker 1: in his own family, but also scenarios that he could
Speaker 1: tell through his research that there was a lot of
Speaker 1: unsolved murders going on, you know. And he explained how
Speaker 1: the the mortuaries would right the death certificates in such
Speaker 1: a way where they would not draw any attention. Henry
Speaker 1: Rowne is mentioned in that book, and that got Jim
Speaker 1: curious about other members of his family. So one day,
Speaker 1: when he was visiting his mom back home, he decided
Speaker 1: to ask her about it. She was in living room
Speaker 1: and I was in the kitchen, and I was just
Speaker 1: shouting questions at her because I was reading the book.
Speaker 1: I said, have you read the book? Have you read
Speaker 1: what Jujiah read? And you know, so, how did Grandpa
Speaker 1: Gray die? You had a heart attack. How did Grandma
Speaker 1: Gray die? She died giving birth to your your uncle Clarence.
Speaker 1: How did your mom die? She died in a car,
Speaker 1: right as did your uncle when he was an infant.
Speaker 1: So you read the book, you have this conversation with
Speaker 1: your mom and next thing, you know, what Dennis was
Speaker 1: writing was arguably could be happening in this family, but
Speaker 1: we just didn't talk about it. What did you think
Speaker 1: after that conversation. She's way too smart to be naive,
Speaker 1: but she was that. She was trying to pretend she was.
Speaker 1: That's what I thought. I'm trying to put myself in
Speaker 1: my mom's place right now. She lived through all that
Speaker 1: as a child, and here she is, you know, under
Speaker 1: late sixties in the trying to explain it to her
Speaker 1: young son who's in his twenties, and how much do
Speaker 1: you share? Whatever? More she knew she it went to
Speaker 1: her grave, you know. But just that one little conversation
Speaker 1: we had about how everyone passed away, she acknowledged in
Speaker 1: that ten year span, my grandfather, my grandmother, my grandmother
Speaker 1: on my other side, and my uncle on that same side,
Speaker 1: and my great grandfather all. But what were those ten
Speaker 1: years from the reason that this is important is that
Speaker 1: it has not gone away with our tribe. Our people
Speaker 1: have not made peace with this yet. We were forced
Speaker 1: into silence out of fear and fear It is probably
Speaker 1: not the right word, because fear is something that you
Speaker 1: imagine in your mind that's not really happening. No, it
Speaker 1: was happening. You know, it's not fear if it's really happening. Right,
Speaker 1: Jim Gray is not the only oc Age citizen who's
Speaker 1: had to piece together parts of his family history with
Speaker 1: books and research that generation their elders, they just didn't
Speaker 1: talk about it. What I took from that conversation with
Speaker 1: Jim and the many other phone calls and sit downs
Speaker 1: we've had over the last several months, is that it's
Speaker 1: not just the Bureau of Indian Affairs that's keeping details
Speaker 1: about non os Age head right holders a secret. There's
Speaker 1: this big gap and a lot of Osage famili's history
Speaker 1: when it comes to that time period, and that's made
Speaker 1: it difficult for even the os Age nation to piece
Speaker 1: together which outsiders have shares of their mineral estate. Jim says,
Speaker 1: people have tried. We got a list that was handwritten.
Speaker 1: It was copied and copied and copied and handed out
Speaker 1: at different meetings. There was just a list of names,
Speaker 1: organizations and individuals, but no value next to each one
Speaker 1: of them where they owned one head ride or ten
Speaker 1: head rights or fraction of one. When Jim became chief,
Speaker 1: he says that handwritten list had already been circulating within
Speaker 1: the os Age Nation's government. That list that I had,
Speaker 1: that all wrinkled up over copied list, It wasn't actual.
Speaker 1: I couldn't attribute it to anybody at the b I
Speaker 1: as an official list. The b I would never go
Speaker 1: on the record and say these are the people who
Speaker 1: got head rights and who wrote the list. We don't know.
Speaker 1: No one at the b I would ever acknowledge who
Speaker 1: authored that list. They've been protecting. Those names are over
Speaker 1: a hundred years. You know, names of non no stages
Speaker 1: who have our money and get our money. You know
Speaker 1: that today. Yeah, when the official list came out, the
Speaker 1: one Tara Damon saw in the paper with all the
Speaker 1: nonoc ages who had head rights. It wasn't just o
Speaker 1: s Age citizens who noticed a lot of people, a
Speaker 1: lot of namely that probably those people that were on
Speaker 1: that list, Um, we're not happy, you know. And they
Speaker 1: were very vocal and I know that from you personal
Speaker 1: communication with Charles Pratt, and they came up to him
Speaker 1: and we're just so angry that this list had come out.
Speaker 1: This had all been kept under wraps for so long.
Speaker 1: Now it was out there in the open. You should
Speaker 1: have seen the amount of attorneys that showed up to
Speaker 1: represent the white people. Kara told me about one time
Speaker 1: when her uncle Charles brought her to court with him.
Speaker 1: I had driven him and you know, we went to
Speaker 1: court and I said, who were those people? And he said, oh,
Speaker 1: those are the Chorneese for the white people. You know,
Speaker 1: they're all here. One attorney told me after the list
Speaker 1: came out, the courtroom was like an Oklahoma Bar Association meeting.
Speaker 1: A bunch of people on that list got a lawyer.
Speaker 1: But in the end they didn't really need the lawyers.
Speaker 1: After all that, the court said it wasn't necessary for
Speaker 1: all these people to be at it as defendants for
Speaker 1: the case to go forward. But the list. They couldn't
Speaker 1: undo the list. It was just out there, lingering, no explanations,
Speaker 1: no amounts just names, and for the last thirteen years,
Speaker 1: lots and lots of questions about how on earth they
Speaker 1: ended up with. Os Age had rights Worker is underway
Speaker 1: in Pajuska, or director Martin Scorsese will make his next movie,
Speaker 1: Killers of the Flower Movie. People talk more than ever
Speaker 1: about the Reign of Terror now, maybe partly because of
Speaker 1: that list, but mostly because of a movie about it
Speaker 1: said to come out within the next year or so.
Speaker 1: A lot of the movie was filmed in Osage County
Speaker 1: and features Osage citizens crews recreating the nineteen twenties tearing
Speaker 1: out metal to restore what the streets of a Huska
Speaker 1: wants looked like. It's directed by Martin Scorsese. Leonardo DiCaprio
Speaker 1: and Robert de Niro are starring in it. So is
Speaker 1: Lily Gladstone, who grew up on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation
Speaker 1: in Montana. As filming started, o s Age leaders met
Speaker 1: with Scorsese. If the story was going to be told,
Speaker 1: they wanted it told right. The movie is based on
Speaker 1: a book also called Killers of the Flower Moon. It's
Speaker 1: from a few years ago by a journalist named David Grant.
Speaker 1: The book focuses a lot on the murders William Hale
Speaker 1: was behind, including Henry Rownes. There have been a few
Speaker 1: books about the Reign of Terror, but none of them
Speaker 1: took off quite like Grands. The book's success has met
Speaker 1: a lot of people across the country are now learning
Speaker 1: about this history for the first time, and as that
Speaker 1: history becomes more widely known, people have even started traveling
Speaker 1: to Osage County to see where it all happened. An
Speaker 1: o s Age News article from June of counted four
Speaker 1: tours being offered in the county at the cemetery where
Speaker 1: many of the victims are buried. The Osage Nation had
Speaker 1: to put up offense to keep tourists out. This history
Speaker 1: didn't end a hundred years ago. It still shaped Osage
Speaker 1: County today, and not just its tourism. It's left behind
Speaker 1: questions about who gained wealth back then and how, questions
Speaker 1: that could have painful answers. I asked Tara, would it
Speaker 1: be better to leave that past alone? I don't want
Speaker 1: it to be like unnecessarily opening old wounds. You know,
Speaker 1: It's there's never been any closure, So the truth has
Speaker 1: got to come out, you know, and it and it's
Speaker 1: it's not always pretty and it's not always flattering. Um,
Speaker 1: but I think that's one thing that as O sages
Speaker 1: were we as if people have to acknowledge that and
Speaker 1: and go through that, and then the same thing for
Speaker 1: everyone else that was involved. You know that that is involved.
Speaker 1: And it's probably gonna depend on who you talked to,
Speaker 1: you know, because some people will feel differently about it. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I was just you know, they're too powerful
Speaker 1: or just stop or you know, um, they they being
Speaker 1: like you know, like the Drummonds or someone that has
Speaker 1: so much property, Oh, sage property. How did you get it?
Speaker 1: How they get it? I haven't fully told you yet.
Speaker 1: Why I'm telling you this story, why I first called
Speaker 1: Tara more than a year ago. Why we're talking about
Speaker 1: this list. I'm telling you all this because on that list,
Speaker 1: alongside the Catholic church oil companies, the family of a
Speaker 1: movie star is another name Drummond. I'm read Drummond. I
Speaker 1: live on a ranch in the middle of nowhere, and
Speaker 1: all my recipes have to be approved by cowboys, hungry kids,
Speaker 1: and Nate. Here's what's happening on the ranch. If you
Speaker 1: know the name Drummond, it's probably because of the pioneer
Speaker 1: woman read Drummond. She's another reason Pahaska is getting so
Speaker 1: much attention right now. We told you last night at ten.
Speaker 1: Read Drummond, also known as The Pioneer Woman and for
Speaker 1: her hit show on the Food Network, How the Job
Speaker 1: Fair in Tulsa Today for or the Pioneer Woman Mercantile
Speaker 1: store opening in Pasco. Reads a Food Network star. She's
Speaker 1: become famous for her down home cooking recipes for chicken
Speaker 1: fried steak and chocolate peanut butter pies and not You
Speaker 1: Naked Brownies. Her restaurants in downtown Pahaska bring a bunch
Speaker 1: of tourists. You can shop at her store called The
Speaker 1: Mercantile and stay at her hotel, The Pioneer Woman Boarding House.
Speaker 1: Re started out as a blogger, but over the last
Speaker 1: ten years or so, her brand is kind of exploded.
Speaker 1: She has a lifestyle website published by Hearst and Walmart.
Speaker 1: Carries a line of dishes and fro towels and clothing,
Speaker 1: all with her trademark floral design. Refashions herself as a
Speaker 1: city girl turned branchwife. She married into the Drummond family.
Speaker 1: Her brand sells a lifestyle call it Upmarket Pioneer and
Speaker 1: her books and blog posts. She calls her husband Lad
Speaker 1: Drummond the Marlborough Man. He runs a massive ranching operation
Speaker 1: alongside his brother Tim. His family has been her and
Speaker 1: cattle for four generations here in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, near Tulsa.
Speaker 1: I've asked for an interview with her and Lad, but
Speaker 1: so far she hasn't responded. And I want to be
Speaker 1: clear that while she's built her brand around the drum
Speaker 1: and ranching legacy, a lot of what I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell you about in this series happened long before Re
Speaker 1: or any other present day members of the family were
Speaker 1: even born today. When you look at a map of
Speaker 1: os Age County, a place that was once owned entirely
Speaker 1: by the OCGE Nation, a huge chunk of it is
Speaker 1: now owned by the Drummond family and other large non
Speaker 1: o s Age ranching incorporations. A lot of Drummonds are
Speaker 1: still ranchers. Some are lawyers all right. The following segment
Speaker 1: is sponsored by a Blue Sky Bank. One of them
Speaker 1: runs a bank like this is a bank has been
Speaker 1: around for a long long time. We are one of
Speaker 1: the last remaining true community owned banks. Began in Pahuska
Speaker 1: in nineteen o four or the Drummond in this interview.
Speaker 1: The one who owns Blue Sky Bank is named getting A. Drummond.
Speaker 1: He's also the Republican nominee for Oklahoma Attorney General. The
Speaker 1: election is this November, and it comes out a pretty
Speaker 1: critical time for the state and tribal nations in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: If Gettinger wins, he'll be leading the way Oklahoma responds
Speaker 1: to a series of Supreme Court decisions that have huge
Speaker 1: impacts on tribal sovereignty. No Democratic candidates filed the run
Speaker 1: for a g in this race. The victory comes as
Speaker 1: a big relief for Drummond, who lost in a close
Speaker 1: Republican primary runoff. I could go on about the various
Speaker 1: ways the Drummonds are deeply rooted in Oklahoma. The family
Speaker 1: has been here since before it was a state. They
Speaker 1: were some of the first white people on the O.
Speaker 1: S H. Reservation. The first Drumman who came here, named Frederick,
Speaker 1: was a Scottish immigrant. He moved to the O. S H.
Speaker 1: Reservation in the late eighteen hundreds. But the reason I'm
Speaker 1: telling you all this is that a hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: members of the Drummond family were intertwined with the financial
Speaker 1: affair of generations of o s Age families. They owned
Speaker 1: a store that almost the whole town of Hominy shopped at.
Speaker 1: They ran the town bank, helped oversee the publisher of
Speaker 1: the local paper, owned part of a funeral home. They
Speaker 1: were financial guardians, administered estates, and they bought land, lots
Speaker 1: of it. Today, a bunch of members of the extended
Speaker 1: Drummond family have land in ranching businesses in os Age County.
Speaker 1: When you put the dozens of Drummond individuals and entities together,
Speaker 1: the broader family owns more land there than anyone else,
Speaker 1: almost nine of the county. In fact, there's some of
Speaker 1: the biggest landowners in the state. The name Drummonds on
Speaker 1: that list of non os Age head right holders too.
Speaker 1: It's right there in black and white. The Alfred Alexander
Speaker 1: Drummond Trust, Frederick Drummond, someone named Jeane Drummond. Those last
Speaker 1: two have died since the list was published, meaning those
Speaker 1: head right shares have passed down to someone else. I've
Speaker 1: been reporting on energy, oil and gas for the most
Speaker 1: part for a few years now, and one day I
Speaker 1: got a call from a source, an Oklahoma oil guy.
Speaker 1: He had a tip. The source told me there was
Speaker 1: more to the Drummonds than people outside Osage County knew.
Speaker 1: He told me the Drummonds had head rights, maybe even
Speaker 1: a lot. This was just a rumor, but knowing the
Speaker 1: history of the place, all the tragedy surrounding head rights,
Speaker 1: I wanted to know if it was true. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. The list in the Big Heart Times told
Speaker 1: me some of the Drummonds had head rights, or at
Speaker 1: least pieces of them, But I wanted to know if
Speaker 1: this was the name that stood out to folks. There
Speaker 1: are so many people out there that have access to
Speaker 1: head right payments that are nono sage. They have no
Speaker 1: business whatsoever with them. I started asking around at head
Speaker 1: rights and then on oath ages who had them, and
Speaker 1: I learned that Drummond is one of the first names
Speaker 1: people bring up. There's always, you know, the tales that
Speaker 1: you hear that the Grummans have head rights, Conico Phillips
Speaker 1: has some, the Drummonds have some. I asked everyone who
Speaker 1: would talked to me what they had heard about the
Speaker 1: Drummonds history, what they might be holding onto today. And
Speaker 1: the more people I talked to, the more I started
Speaker 1: to hear a lot of different numbers. Anywhere seven there
Speaker 1: was a number in the nights that i've you know,
Speaker 1: because people talk to you so like all the checks
Speaker 1: go through this thing called the b I A. Someone
Speaker 1: told me you were in a meeting one time and
Speaker 1: you said that the Drummonds have two head rights approximately.
Speaker 1: What's the exact quote. I don't know the real answer.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen the list. Sometimes times the numbers were
Speaker 1: lower more. I thought it was like dat, I don't
Speaker 1: see any you have. Do you think that the number
Speaker 1: is a lot lower? I think it's a lot lower,
Speaker 1: probably two three. I've talked to members of the Drummond
Speaker 1: family for the story. You'll hear from some of them
Speaker 1: later in this series, and I want to note that
Speaker 1: their family history, Oklahoma history, it's complicated. One member of
Speaker 1: the Drummond family told me he's a citizen at the
Speaker 1: Choctaw Nation that his mother's side has its own history
Speaker 1: with the fallout of white settlement. We'll get to that,
Speaker 1: but for now, just know that when I asked some
Speaker 1: of the Drummond family about head rights, they also said
Speaker 1: the numbers a lot lower. My name is Jason Ahmat
Speaker 1: and an attorney at a law firm called the Indian
Speaker 1: and Environmental law group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Jason Ahmat
Speaker 1: has seen the list, the one with numbers. Jason spent
Speaker 1: the past twenty years working on the mismanagement case that
Speaker 1: made the list public. He represented Charles pratt Ter, his uncle.
Speaker 1: At the heart of the lawsuit is this idea that
Speaker 1: the government has mismanaged the mineral estate and never had
Speaker 1: to fully account for where all the money's gone. You said, look,
Speaker 1: not only are the is the fellow government failing to
Speaker 1: account for these things, but when they're failing to account
Speaker 1: for them, they're also paying some people too much money,
Speaker 1: not paying other people enough money, not paying some people
Speaker 1: who are entitled any money at all. And when Jason
Speaker 1: and his co council made that argument to get an accounting,
Speaker 1: the government turned around and said, it's not just us
Speaker 1: you should be suing. There's all these other people who
Speaker 1: are out here who are non Indians. And if the
Speaker 1: if the planeffs are saying that we're paying those people money,
Speaker 1: right then um, and we shouldn't that you should have
Speaker 1: they should have to name them as defendant. And initially
Speaker 1: the court bought that really crappy argument right um, and
Speaker 1: ordered us to do that. The court's order got the
Speaker 1: government to turn over the list to Jason. That version
Speaker 1: has numbers, but Jason's bound by a protective order. The
Speaker 1: court has limited how much he can talk about this,
Speaker 1: so we have to be careful what he says. And
Speaker 1: while we complied with very carefully with the court's protective order,
Speaker 1: we were required to name each of those entities and
Speaker 1: people in the complaint that was filed in the case,
Speaker 1: and so they're all named in the caption of the case.
Speaker 1: So that's how the names without numbers ended up in
Speaker 1: the big Heart times. All of them were listed as
Speaker 1: defendants in this case, which was public and not bound
Speaker 1: by the protective order. That's the list that tear us saw.
Speaker 1: So even though the court changed its mind and said
Speaker 1: all those nonoth age head right holders didn't actually need
Speaker 1: to be involved in the case, the list is out there.
Speaker 1: Jason still has the original list, the one with head
Speaker 1: right amounts, alongside the names. I've tried to get Jason
Speaker 1: to give me his list over the phone in his
Speaker 1: office at lunch. I've asked specifically about the Drummonds too.
Speaker 1: If I if I could tell you, I might try to,
Speaker 1: But I don't really know. I just don't know that number.
Speaker 1: I've got it out of c D wrong, which is
Speaker 1: back in the day. UM, but I don't know the answer.
Speaker 1: What happens if if you share that information, I'll probably
Speaker 1: lose my bar lescens I asked if the Drummonds had
Speaker 1: a lot. He wouldn't say. I asked if the number
Speaker 1: was only a few. No answer, And it did seem
Speaker 1: like Jason wanted to tell me. I don't get it.
Speaker 1: I don't understand why the management of these resources is
Speaker 1: kept a secret from the people who are the beneficiaries. Right,
Speaker 1: every other trust situation in the world. Right, your family trust. Right,
Speaker 1: if you have a family trust, there'll be a trustee
Speaker 1: who provides on demand and regularly and accounting for what
Speaker 1: it is that they've been doing. Right, We've got here's
Speaker 1: your money, this is your land. These are the other
Speaker 1: things that we've been managing for you as your trustee, UM,
Speaker 1: your stocks or whatever it is. This is how they've performed. Right.
Speaker 1: Beneficiary is entitled to know that. This is the only
Speaker 1: trust I know of where that information is a secret,
Speaker 1: even from the beneficiary. Around the time I first started
Speaker 1: asking about this, I filed the public records request. I
Speaker 1: asked the Bureau of the Need Affairs for a list
Speaker 1: of all the nonos head right holders and how many
Speaker 1: shares each of them had. When I met with Jason,
Speaker 1: that request had just been denied. The government said it
Speaker 1: would violate the privacy of non O head right holders
Speaker 1: to disclose how many they had in the government, the
Speaker 1: federal and it's great at this if they've got a
Speaker 1: situation and there's lots of them in Indian country where
Speaker 1: there's a resource that benefits the individuals but is managed
Speaker 1: by the tribe. The federal government plays this game of well,
Speaker 1: you're not the tribe, we can't talk to you. Well,
Speaker 1: you're not the individuals, we can't talk to you. We
Speaker 1: have this Privacy Act concern. Therefore, we can't give you
Speaker 1: any information about this. This is what they're doing to
Speaker 1: you and your FO. Your request for that information is
Speaker 1: their m o. That's the way. That's the way they play.
Speaker 1: I wasn't surprised when the government denied that for our request.
Speaker 1: Everyone told me this would happen. I'm not the first
Speaker 1: person to ask, but each time someone presses the b
Speaker 1: i A, this privacy argument comes up. The Bureau of
Speaker 1: Indian Affairs is the only one able to answer this
Speaker 1: for sure, but I want to let you know I
Speaker 1: have found records about the Drummonds head rights. I've had
Speaker 1: to go by what I've seen in old documents deep
Speaker 1: in the National Archives. What I've found is a much
Speaker 1: smaller number than those I originally heard. I've been able
Speaker 1: to confirm only three fourths of one head right owned
Speaker 1: across a couple of branches of the drum And family.
Speaker 1: I haven't found any indication there may be more. But still,
Speaker 1: when I started asking around, I've realized this feeling, this suspicion,
Speaker 1: has been lurking for decades in Osage County, a deep
Speaker 1: sense of distrust over the origins of the drum And
Speaker 1: family's wealth. That a big cache of head rights must
Speaker 1: be in the hands of the extended drumm And family,
Speaker 1: a family that owns so much land, land once owned
Speaker 1: by o Sage families. What was the source of that wealth?
Speaker 1: Was it head rights or something else? This question it
Speaker 1: took me across Oklahoma, across Texas, into people's homes, courthouse faults,
Speaker 1: warehouses of records, to a sea of grass in the
Speaker 1: middle of the prairie, through over a hundred years of history,
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you the story of the Drummonds
Speaker 1: head right share, but I'm also going to tell you
Speaker 1: about something else, Because once I started looking into head
Speaker 1: rights and what I heard might be an unknown oil dynasty,
Speaker 1: I realized this story wasn't what I thought. What I
Speaker 1: found was another chapter of this country's history of white settlement.
Speaker 1: After the forced removals and the land runs, something more
Speaker 1: gradual than the murders of the Reign of Terror still
Speaker 1: resulted in a massive transfer of wealth and land from
Speaker 1: Native Americans to white people. It was an entire system
Speaker 1: that puts certain people in positions of power, power that
Speaker 1: could be used to gain wealth and influence for future generations,
Speaker 1: a system that some of the earliest Drummonds in Osage
Speaker 1: County learned to operate and build businesses around. This story
Speaker 1: is about that system in the place that she aped,
Speaker 1: a place that's reckoning with that history today. It's a
Speaker 1: story about the Drummonds and the Osage Nation, but it's
Speaker 1: also a story about America, about the land and the
Speaker 1: people who ended up with it. Next time on in Trust,
Speaker 1: a clue left behind by one of the first Drummonds
Speaker 1: in Osage County and what it reveals about their head right.
Speaker 1: Share in Trust is a production of Bloomberg and I
Speaker 1: Heart Media. It's reported and hosted by me Rachel Adams
Speaker 1: Heard Additional reporting by Alison Edita Davis Land is our
Speaker 1: senior producer. Samantha Story is our executive producer. Jeff Grocott
Speaker 1: is our senior editor. Additional production by Victor Evayez, Production
Speaker 1: support from Hilda de Carly. Sound engineering is by Blake Naples,
Speaker 1: Additional editing by Francesca Leavy and Daniel Ferrara, fact checking
Speaker 1: by Molly Nugent. Our theme music is by Laura Wortman.
Speaker 1: Photography by Shane Brown. Bloomberg Digital is run by Jared
Speaker 1: Standberg and Katie Boyce. This story wouldn't have been possible
Speaker 1: without the research and reporting of a long list of others.
Speaker 1: They include Shannon Shaw Duty and Louise Redcorn, The Osage News,
Speaker 1: Jean Dennison in her book Colonial Entangleman, The Underground Reservation
Speaker 1: by Terry P. Wilson, A Pipe for February by Charles H. Redcorn,
Speaker 1: The Deaths of Sybil Bolton by Dennis mccaulloff Jr. And
Speaker 1: Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grant. Additional thanks
Speaker 1: to Linley Lynn, David Ingold, Evan Applegate, Devin Pendleton, Ariel Brown,
Speaker 1: Jane Yeoman's, Eugene Resnick, Cynthia Hoffman, Frank Coleshaw, Jackie Kessler,
Speaker 1: Bernadette Walker, Emily Ingleman, Michael Fraser, Thomas Houston, Stephanie Davidson, McKinnon,
Speaker 1: Da Kaeper, Carly Snyder, Melissa Shadrick, Rakheetas, Luca Flynn mc roberts,
Speaker 1: Robert Blow and Margaret Sutherland. You can email us at
Speaker 1: podcasts at bloomberg dot net for a map, photos and
Speaker 1: other information about this episode. Visit bloomberg dot com slash
Speaker 1: in trust, find intrust anywhere you get your podcasts