WEBVTT - The List 0:00:00.000 --> 0:00:05.880 Oh. This is a story about land and oil, about family, 0:00:06.559 --> 0:00:11.160 about wealth, about the stories we passed down and the 0:00:11.240 --> 0:00:16.119 stories we don't. It's about a Native American reservation and 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:28.880 the people who own the land today. This story took 0:00:28.920 --> 0:00:32.400 me to northern Oklahoma, to os Age County on the 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:37.360 border with Kansas, one and a half million acres covered 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:41.159 in blue stem grass with pools of oil below the ground, 0:00:42.360 --> 0:00:46.640 and that oil a century ago it brought tremendous wealth 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:49.600 to some of the people who lived here, at least 0:00:49.720 --> 0:01:02.400 for a while. Hello, this is Tara Dameron. She's a 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:06.040 citizen of the os Age Nation. Tears in charge of 0:01:06.080 --> 0:01:08.760 an oth Age history center called the White Hair Memorial 0:01:09.200 --> 0:01:12.440 outside of a small town called Hominy. The building is 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:15.880 an old house shrouded by trees, tucked away from the 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:18.720 miles and miles of blue stem grass you see from 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:21.679 the highway. And I'm here because I wanted Tear to 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:25.319 tell me what she remembers from June of two thousand nine. 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:30.440 It is hot. I just remember just having to, let 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:38.639 you know, get myself prepared for the heat. And June 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:41.440 for o s Ages is a really busy month. That's 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:45.200 when we have our Ilanshka our ceremonies, and it's kind 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:47.560 of like a reunion because you know, you get to 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:50.880 see a lot of your family members, and you know 0:01:51.080 --> 0:01:52.640 a lot of people will come home for that and 0:01:52.680 --> 0:01:55.280 come back to that and make a point to be there. 0:01:56.200 --> 0:01:58.840 Tara has been going to the June ceremonies, the big 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:02.280 meals and traditional dances since she was a kid. But 0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:04.840 I wanted to know what she remembered about one specific 0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:09.720 day from that month, June. It was a Thursday. It 0:02:09.800 --> 0:02:12.440 was the start of the Homedy dances. You know, everybody's 0:02:12.480 --> 0:02:16.200 sort of keyed up and excited. Everybody was talking about 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:27.799 the list and his names were on it the list. 0:02:28.600 --> 0:02:32.160 This is why I wanted to talk to Tara. I'm 0:02:32.200 --> 0:02:34.720 a reporter. I'd gotten a tip about one of the 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:37.440 names on that list. She mentioned the name of a 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:40.720 prominent family you might have heard of. We'll get to that, 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:43.560 but first you should know that this list, when it 0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:46.840 came out, it was a big deal. Tara had been 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:50.160 hearing about it all day at lunch her parents house 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:53.040 earlier while her dad read the paper. The first time 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:56.640 she heard was from her uncle, Charles Pratt. He called 0:02:56.639 --> 0:03:00.800 her that morning. Excited, baby was his term of affection 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:04.800 and he's like maybe the list came out, you know, 0:03:05.040 --> 0:03:08.840 like what, But he was like a little kid. Charles 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:11.760 was in the middle of a lawsuit, and his lawsuit 0:03:11.919 --> 0:03:15.360 is the reason this list became public. Charles and his 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:19.040 co plaintiffs were suing the United States government over how 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:22.080 it is managing something called the O Sage Mineral Estate. 0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:25.919 The mineral of state dates back more than a hundred years. 0:03:26.360 --> 0:03:29.520 The US had been breaking up Native reservations, trying to 0:03:29.520 --> 0:03:32.040 privatize the land and take it out of the control 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:34.519 of tribal nations. But when it came to the O 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:39.360 s Age Reservation, everything underground, the mineral rights the oil, 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:42.200 the O s Age Nation fought to hold onto it, 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:46.720 and they succeeded. Congress passed a law in nineteen o six, 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:50.040 and the mineral rights to the reservation were put into 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:53.920 one big pot that was divided into shares like a corporation. 0:03:54.800 --> 0:04:00.360 The shareholders were two thousand, two hundred nine citizens. Each 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:03.520 share would come to be called a head right, and 0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:06.280 everyone who had a head right was entitled to some 0:04:06.360 --> 0:04:09.360 of the money from oil and gas drilling in the area. 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:13.520 It's money from the mineral estate set aside for the 0:04:13.560 --> 0:04:16.479 O s Age Indians that our leaders set up to 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:23.040 help us provide a financial foundation. The government paid out 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:26.680 royalties to head right holders each quarter. Over the years, 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:30.080 most shares have been divided into smaller and smaller fractions. 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:33.680 Pasta descendants, head rights are a lot more than just 0:04:33.720 --> 0:04:36.120 a check in the mail for oil money. For a 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:39.240 long time, the federal government didn't even consider someone a 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:42.000 citizen of the os Age nation unless they had a 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:44.599 head right or a fraction of one. They couldn't vote 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:48.599 in O s Age elections without them. When Charles Pratt 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:52.039 and his co plaintiffs filed that lawsuit, they were arguing 0:04:52.040 --> 0:04:54.599 the government was doing a bad job of managing all 0:04:54.640 --> 0:04:56.960 the money that belonged to os Age head right holders. 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:00.440 They wanted the US to provide an accounting where all 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:03.760 this money oh Stage money was going and had gone 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:07.880 over the last hundred years. For a long time, the 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:10.960 way the US government managed this trust has been wrapped 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:14.039 in secrecy. Even the people who were meant to benefit 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:17.640 from the trust couldn't see the financial details. The government 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:20.240 had long kept the names of head right holders private too, 0:05:21.600 --> 0:05:23.920 but as part of that lawsuit, a court ordered the 0:05:23.960 --> 0:05:27.640 government to produce a list the names of people, churches, 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:31.119 oil companies and other groups that were not oth age, 0:05:31.400 --> 0:05:33.280 but it somehow ended up with the share of the 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:37.560 mineral estate. Nearly two thousand names made public because of 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:40.360 a surprise decision by the court that all those non 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:43.800 sages would need to be sued too. This was the 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:46.560 first time in over a hundred years that we use 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:49.440 O sages were able to see in black and white 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:52.960 an official list, you know, from the government, of all 0:05:53.000 --> 0:06:03.120 these NONO sages that had head rights. M let's see yea. 0:06:04.200 --> 0:06:07.320 A local paper had published the list in full that morning. 0:06:08.040 --> 0:06:11.400 The paper was The Big Heart Times. It's tagline reads 0:06:11.440 --> 0:06:14.159 the only newspaper in the world that really gives the deadly. 0:06:15.640 --> 0:06:19.520 So this is dated Thursday, June eight, two thousand and nine, 0:06:19.600 --> 0:06:23.680 the Big Heart Times, and the headline raids suit names, 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:28.120 not O stage shareholders. The list of defendants is vast, 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:35.680 one thousand, seven nine people and entities. That includes ranchers, lawyers, churches, schools, 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:38.480 and even a former Library of Congress who wants to 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:47.279 join the Communist Party. That's an amazing So in addition 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:52.719 to individuals, there were corporations, there were a number of churches, 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:56.039 a lot of trust. You see that a lot. Jean Harlowe, 0:06:56.160 --> 0:06:59.599 the hiss And Memorial Center, University of Oklahoma, the University 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:02.800 of Texas as several oil companies are on there. Of course, 0:07:02.800 --> 0:07:06.080 the Drummonds were on there. Um they're a big ranch family. 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:09.720 Hand O Sage County. Some of these names Tera told 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:13.720 me we're pretty surprising. The family of Jean Harlowe, a 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:17.360 famous Hollywood actress in the nineteen thirties. The his Some 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:20.960 Memorial Center, an institution that was forced to shut down 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:25.120 decades ago because staff were accused of abusing the intellectually 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:29.280 disabled patients who lived there. Like, how in the world 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:32.000 did they get ahold of os Age head rights? Which 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:34.840 is the next logical question. You know, anyone looking at 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:37.840 that lift would ask, we do know how some non 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:40.680 oth ages would have ended up with head rights for 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:43.160 a long time. They could be sold to no oth ages. 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:46.560 Sometimes oth ages use their head right share as an 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:49.680 investment for a stake in a company. If you scan 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:53.240 through the list with all the churches and nonprofits, it 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:55.880 seems likely that a lot of them received head rights 0:07:55.960 --> 0:07:58.320 from oz Age citizens who died and left them as 0:07:58.360 --> 0:08:02.560 a charitable donation. But there was another way non oth 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:06.640 Ages got head rights. For a long time, someone outside 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:09.920 the Osage Nation could inherit one if they married an 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:12.800 oth s Age man or woman and that person died. 0:08:13.600 --> 0:08:16.640 And when oil was discovered in Osage County and head 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:21.680 rights became incredibly valuable, os Ages who had them became targets. 0:08:28.480 --> 0:08:32.800 Often you'll hear that time the referred to as the 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:37.000 Reign of Terror, when dozens of Osages were targeted and 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:42.160 widespread violent schemes. These weren't just one off crimes. It 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:46.360 was an entire criminal conspiracy led by white people who 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:50.199 would marry Osages for their head rights and then kill them. 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:52.040 And what I hope you'll see as we get into 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:55.160 this is that the Reign of Terror left a profound 0:08:55.240 --> 0:09:00.160 impact on the Osage Nation. It devastated the community at 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:14.239 family's apart, and the effects are still present today. Terra says, 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:17.720 for a long time, the Rain of Terror just wasn't discussed. 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:20.600 It was too painful and the risk of becoming a 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:24.360 target again seemed too high. So when this lift came out, 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:28.760 people started asking questions. They were asking family members, So 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:32.880 it started sort of this unearthing of this sort of big, huge, 0:09:33.080 --> 0:09:36.640 giant secret that you know O Stages or local people 0:09:36.679 --> 0:09:38.679 that you know grew up in a Toronto Stage County 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:42.000 sort of always knew or suspected it was huge. It 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:47.160 was a significant moment. Think about that nineteen sixty, two 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:52.280 thousand and nine. Imagine being defrauded all those years. I 0:09:52.280 --> 0:09:58.000 think you're going to be pissed, right, Yeah. Yeah. Para 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:01.080 laughed sometimes when she talks about the but I don't 0:10:01.080 --> 0:10:04.479 get the sense she thinks it's funny. There's this outrageousness 0:10:04.520 --> 0:10:08.319 to it all that the Osage Nations Trustee, the US 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:12.320 federal government is keeping this information from the very people 0:10:12.600 --> 0:10:16.400 this trust is for, even after that system created one 0:10:16.440 --> 0:10:19.240 of the worst tragedies in the O s Age Nation's history. 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:23.600 Terris says when the list came out and people started 0:10:23.640 --> 0:10:26.440 talking about where those head rights ended up, it gave 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:28.920 more momentum to what her uncle Charles was saying in 0:10:29.000 --> 0:10:32.720 his lawsuit that the federal government wasn't doing a good 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:37.640 job managing OH Sage money. It absolutely made made us 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:41.640 start to question and wonder and ask, and you know 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:46.200 all these things that someone like in a shareholder of corporation, 0:10:46.440 --> 0:10:50.040 those would be normal things, financial reports, and you know, 0:10:50.559 --> 0:10:52.960 we have a right to know where our money is going. 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:56.800 Just so you know. I've asked the government agency that 0:10:56.840 --> 0:11:00.920 manages the mineral estate, the Bureau of Indian Affair, about 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:03.199 some of the names on that list, like his him, 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:07.199 where those checks are going and who's getting paid, especially 0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:11.880 if the organization literally doesn't exist anymore. A spokesman said 0:11:11.920 --> 0:11:15.760 they don't comment on issues involving ongoing litigation. When it 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:18.280 comes to head rights, the federal government tends to say 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:21.440 it's a matter of privacy that the protections in place 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:23.760 for o s Age head right holders are the same 0:11:23.800 --> 0:11:27.600 ones in place for non os Age ones. It's important 0:11:27.600 --> 0:11:29.680 to remember that when it comes to the os Age 0:11:29.760 --> 0:11:33.840 nation and tribal nations across the country, the United States 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:37.960 isn't just a bureaucrat. It's a trustee, a relationship born 0:11:38.040 --> 0:11:41.000 from the treaties that were signed and often forced more 0:11:41.040 --> 0:11:45.040 than the century ago. It means the federal government has 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:50.720 a fiduciary obligation to tribal nations and tribal citizens whose money, land, 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:54.280 and mineral rights are held in trust by the US 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:58.839 on their behalf. And that fiduciary obligation it's a big deal. 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:02.440 Consider er. The highest degree of duty that exists in 0:12:02.480 --> 0:12:06.679 the American legal system. What I always tell people is 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:11.120 that that government that relationship can't end. Like we can't 0:12:11.120 --> 0:12:13.680 divorce each other, you know what I mean, Like it's 0:12:14.640 --> 0:12:17.880 it is what it is. We can't just say, you 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:20.040 know what, we really don't like you, um and we 0:12:20.080 --> 0:12:23.000 want we want someone else to manage our money. It 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:26.080 doesn't it doesn't work like that. So we're sort of 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:29.160 we are stuck with each other for better or worse. 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:33.160 Over the last several decades, the US has settled multiple 0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:35.920 lawsuits for falling short of its trust duty when it 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:40.000 comes to managing Native American assets. That includes a case 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:43.200 the Osage Nation brought more than twenty years ago that 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:45.520 the U s settled in twenty eleven for three d 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:48.800 eighty million dollars. The settlement paid out to all head 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:52.120 right holders sage or not, meaning someone with one head 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:55.040 right received a little over a hundred fifty thousand dollars. 0:12:55.800 --> 0:12:59.040 But Terra says the fact that NONO Sages continue to 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:01.720 get head right money shows the US is still falling 0:13:01.800 --> 0:13:04.200 short of its obligation to the O s Age Nation. 0:13:05.160 --> 0:13:08.200 When Terra's uncle Charles died, she took his spot as 0:13:08.240 --> 0:13:11.079 one of the plaintiffs on the case. They've been successful 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:16.080 in getting a partial accounting, but the lawsuit is still ongoing. Meanwhile, 0:13:16.280 --> 0:13:18.480 the os Age Nation has been working to get federal 0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:21.280 legislation passed so that some of those head rights can 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:25.000 be returned. Today, a little over a quarter of all 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:27.560 head rights are owned by people or groups that are 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:30.920 not O s Age. When you account for inflation, head 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:33.680 rights owned by non os Ages have paid out half 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:37.240 a billion dollars over the last few decades. It's not 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:40.840 their money, it's our money. It's not Gane Hardlo's money, 0:13:40.840 --> 0:13:46.240 it's not his a memorial center. It's it's our money. 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:54.800 You know, those those original lattas and their descendants. The 0:13:54.960 --> 0:13:58.520 story starts with head rights, but it brought me far 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:02.560 beyond that, because when I started asking about how a 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:05.079 bunch of non os ages ended up on that list, 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:09.959 I found another story too, a story about a whole 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:13.360 system that worked to move oc age wealth into the 0:14:13.400 --> 0:14:17.240 hands of white people, A system that shapes to his 0:14:17.400 --> 0:14:22.560 land and influence here today, a system set up by 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:29.920 the federal government. You're listening to in trust, I'm Rachel 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:47.840 Adams heard. I want to tell you more about that 0:14:47.960 --> 0:14:50.600 list of non os Age head right holders. But to 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:53.200 really understand what it meant for that list to go public, 0:14:53.600 --> 0:14:55.640 you have to know how the os Age Nation got 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:58.960 to its reservation and how the head right system was created. 0:15:00.120 --> 0:15:03.120 For a long time, o s Age Territory stretched across 0:15:03.120 --> 0:15:07.680 the land that would eventually make up Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:11.520 and Arkansas. But the US government pressured the os Age 0:15:11.600 --> 0:15:14.960 Nation into a series of treaties until it was left 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:18.000 with just a small fraction of that land, a reservation 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:21.560 in Kansas. But after a conflict with white settlers on 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:25.320 that reservation, the os Age Nation went south to what 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:29.240 would later become os Age County. The tribe had soldier 0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:33.000 lands in Kansas use that money to buy this reservation. 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:36.400 This is Jim Gray. He was chief of the os 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:40.400 Age Nation from two thousand to two thousand. We didn't 0:15:40.440 --> 0:15:44.040 just get moved here by treaty. We bought it. We 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:47.520 had a property title to it. The os Age Nation 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:52.200 purchased its new reservation from the Cherokee Nation in the seventies. 0:15:52.720 --> 0:15:55.600 Jim told me that property title would prove to be 0:15:55.720 --> 0:15:59.680 massively important because not long after the os Age Nation 0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:04.800 moved the US government wanted to change things again. The 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:08.480 government wanted to take the Sage Reservation, which the nation 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:11.440 as a whole, health the title too, and parceled out 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:16.960 to individuals Age citizens instead. This was called allotment. This 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:21.480 individual o Sage receiving an individual allotment. That was new. 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:26.320 We never went down that road of individual landowners, even 0:16:26.320 --> 0:16:30.480 in Missouri or Arkansas. It was all everyone benefited from 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:33.920 the collective ownership of this land, and they whatever bounty 0:16:34.040 --> 0:16:38.400 came from it was spread with all the people. Allotment 0:16:38.480 --> 0:16:41.760 started on a lot of Native land after Congress passed 0:16:41.800 --> 0:16:46.080 the DAWs General Allotman Act in seven. This was part 0:16:46.080 --> 0:16:49.600 of a broader, deliberate and violent strategy to try and 0:16:49.640 --> 0:16:54.360 assimilate Native communities, kill off their traditions and lifestyles, and 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:58.440 make their land available for white settlement. According to the book, 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:03.240 Uneven ground At reduced Native American controlled land from two 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:08.400 billion acres to one fifty million acres. But the oth 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:11.280 Age Nation was initially exempt from the DAWs Act and 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:16.480 allotment because of that property title Jim mentioned. So when 0:17:16.520 --> 0:17:19.760 they tried to a lot the oth Sage lands, they 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:23.919 couldn't do it without our consent. Where they could just 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:26.159 do whatever they wanted with everyone else's land. That was 0:17:26.400 --> 0:17:31.040 an Indian territory they had. The tribe had some political 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:36.720 rights that protected their property interest, negotiating power, but not 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:40.080 not enough to stop it all together. Statehood was coming. 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:43.240 There's no way you can stop that. And the tribal 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:47.160 leader at that time, James Bigheart, who was a brilliant 0:17:47.160 --> 0:17:52.200 man and way ahead of his time, did what he thought. 0:17:53.080 --> 0:17:54.960 You know, what he thought was the right thing to do. 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:59.280 Is so we cut a deal. Okay, a lot to 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:04.760 surface lay, but the subsurface remains as a mineral state. 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:07.920 This was a savvy and unique deal that O s 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:11.000 Age leaders negotiated. It's all laid out in a law 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:14.480 called the nineteen o six os Age Allotment Act, and 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:17.360 that law is where head rates come from, all those 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:20.040 shares of all the oil and gas rights beneath the land. 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:24.919 The year after that law, Oklahoma became a state and 0:18:24.960 --> 0:18:28.080 it established O Sage County directly on top of the 0:18:28.080 --> 0:18:31.479 O s Age Reservation. There were already some white families 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:35.639 living there, traders and cattlemen, but after allotment, more and 0:18:35.680 --> 0:18:38.560 more settlers moved there and started trying to get land 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:43.440 and head rights for themselves. Starting in the nineteen teens, 0:18:43.760 --> 0:18:48.439 head rights became incredibly valuable. Oil production took off and 0:18:48.480 --> 0:18:51.680 money was pouring in. A lot of os Age families 0:18:51.720 --> 0:18:55.600 could afford the finest cars, the nicest furniture. There were 0:18:55.600 --> 0:18:59.919 tales of this wealth across the country, many of them exaggerated. 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:04.880 In June, the os Age Nation made the New York 0:19:04.920 --> 0:19:09.480 Times the headline os Age our richest people in all 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:14.480 caps and then greatest per capital wealth in world results 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:18.600 from oil deal. But that wealth and all that attention 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:25.200 it brought tragedy. There was the dominant society's view that 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:34.000 these savages weren't entitled to anything, and if they got something, 0:19:34.080 --> 0:19:36.720 then it was within your right as a white person 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:41.480 to take it. And that mentality spilled out into the 0:19:41.680 --> 0:19:47.200 entire society. In an inspector from the Department of Interior 0:19:47.480 --> 0:19:49.919 was sent to oth Age County to report on the 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:54.560 explosion of wealth. Two years later, that inspector, a man 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:59.560 named hs Trailer, submitted to Congress of racist tirade against 0:19:59.560 --> 0:20:02.439 os Age is and how they spent their money. He 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:05.200 called it sinful, and he said if something wasn't done 0:20:05.200 --> 0:20:09.280 about o s Age wealth, then quote their everlasting damnation 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:12.760 is as sure and certain as the daily sinking of 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:16.480 the sun in the West. He neglected to mention the 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:19.040 uptick and crime against O. S Age head right holders. 0:20:19.600 --> 0:20:22.400 No acknowledgment that this money belonged to O. S Age 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:25.120 citizens and they could do whatever they wanted with it, 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:28.480 or that OH Stage spending was largely in line with 0:20:28.600 --> 0:20:32.480 that of white Americans in the same income bracket. These 0:20:32.480 --> 0:20:37.359 guys were friends of the Native American community. And the 0:20:37.400 --> 0:20:40.840 fact that these particular Native Americans ended up with a 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:46.719 credibly wealthy something something's wrong with the system, you know. 0:20:48.240 --> 0:20:50.840 And if one of them got killed and someone sought 0:20:50.960 --> 0:20:54.320 justice in the state courts, they didn't get it. Do 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:57.680 you think these guys lost any sleep over it. It's 0:20:57.720 --> 0:21:00.919 hard to communicate the full breadth and impact of the 0:21:00.960 --> 0:21:04.320 reign of terror, but you can't understand the importance of 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:07.760 the list without knowing that this was a tragedy that 0:21:07.800 --> 0:21:12.120 many white people in Osage County were complicit in. Groups 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:15.320 of white people conspired to manipulate and murder O s 0:21:15.359 --> 0:21:19.439 Age citizens. The FBI confirmed as much nearly a hundred 0:21:19.520 --> 0:21:23.920 years ago. O Stages were shot, they were poisoned, their 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:27.000 cars were run off the road. One couple's house was 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:30.320 blown up, and it was just like a cottage industry 0:21:30.359 --> 0:21:33.719 of finding different ways to off O Sages. And in 0:21:33.760 --> 0:21:37.120 all those cases there was always some non Indian benefiting 0:21:37.160 --> 0:21:43.679 from that, whether it was a guardian or spouse, creditor, whatever. 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:47.320 We don't have exact numbers on how many people were 0:21:47.359 --> 0:21:50.879 targeted then, because what researchers have found is that a 0:21:50.920 --> 0:21:54.800 lot of these cases were investigated, a lot of times 0:21:54.920 --> 0:21:58.560 they were covered up. Official figures put it somewhere between 0:21:58.640 --> 0:22:01.960 twenty four and six oth Ages who were killed in 0:22:02.000 --> 0:22:05.840 the early nineteen twenties, but at least one federal investigator 0:22:06.160 --> 0:22:09.800 thought it could be in the hundreds. Corruption was rampant 0:22:10.080 --> 0:22:14.280 and local officials often couldn't be trusted, but the reign 0:22:14.320 --> 0:22:18.440 of terror wasn't limited to murderer. It was shady financial 0:22:18.520 --> 0:22:23.080 maneuvering on behalf of bankers and lawyers, intricate schemes involving 0:22:23.119 --> 0:22:27.359 probates and powers of attorney. Sometimes it was more blunt, 0:22:28.119 --> 0:22:31.160 getting someone drunk and tricking them into signing away their land. 0:22:32.080 --> 0:22:37.440 It was like every institution that existed in O Sage 0:22:37.680 --> 0:22:39.879 Nation at the time, or OUs Age County, whoever you 0:22:39.920 --> 0:22:43.520 want to call it was not there for any other 0:22:43.560 --> 0:22:45.640 purpose but to separate the O Sages from their land 0:22:45.640 --> 0:22:50.359 and their money. That's how O Sages fell. It's worth 0:22:50.400 --> 0:22:54.760 remembering the US legal system, the English language, This was 0:22:54.800 --> 0:22:57.480 all almost totally new to a lot of oth Ages 0:22:57.520 --> 0:23:02.400 at the time. The government, specifically the Department of Interior's 0:23:02.520 --> 0:23:05.600 Office of Indian Affairs, they were supposed to make sure 0:23:05.720 --> 0:23:09.119 that didn't lead to exploitation, but they didn't do a 0:23:09.240 --> 0:23:13.000 very good job. What the government chose to do was 0:23:13.119 --> 0:23:17.040 label O Stage citizens incompetent, that was the official word 0:23:17.040 --> 0:23:20.600 they used, incompetent, and put white people in charge of 0:23:20.640 --> 0:23:25.280 their finances. This was an official system. At one point, 0:23:25.800 --> 0:23:29.800 hundreds of Stages and other Native Americans were by default 0:23:29.880 --> 0:23:35.200 appointed a guardian, an educated white person, usually a lawyer 0:23:35.320 --> 0:23:38.760 or a businessman, who had managed their money for them, 0:23:38.800 --> 0:23:44.200 a paternalistic policy steeped in racism that white politicians justified 0:23:44.520 --> 0:23:47.680 as a way to protect Native Americans from getting swindled 0:23:47.760 --> 0:23:51.879 and stolen from But often those guardians were in on 0:23:51.920 --> 0:23:54.960 the very schemes the government said it was trying to prevent. 0:23:56.000 --> 0:24:00.480 We don't really see them as incompetent. Full rules who 0:24:00.520 --> 0:24:04.600 lost everything. We see him more as a horrible victim 0:24:04.680 --> 0:24:10.520 of an of a greedy society that while they were 0:24:10.520 --> 0:24:13.119 trying to learn to walk in both worlds, this world 0:24:13.200 --> 0:24:16.639 just came and stomped on them. You know. Some of 0:24:16.680 --> 0:24:20.520 them survived, some of them didn't, you know. But it's 0:24:20.520 --> 0:24:26.040 a difficult, difficult chapter in our tribe's history that unfortunately 0:24:26.040 --> 0:24:30.159 has created a form of generational trauma, and and not 0:24:30.280 --> 0:24:34.320 so much in the way that you think, but that 0:24:34.640 --> 0:24:38.200 it robbed us of a generational wealth. A single head 0:24:38.280 --> 0:24:41.920 right today, adjusted for inflation, would have paid out about 0:24:42.040 --> 0:24:45.800 four million dollars over the last hundred years. Could you 0:24:45.840 --> 0:24:48.520 imagine if if we were able to hang on to 0:24:48.640 --> 0:24:50.360 that fourth of the head rights that have gone out 0:24:50.359 --> 0:24:53.000 of the tribe, and those dollars got reinvested in our 0:24:53.040 --> 0:24:56.840 children's education or buying land, or building the land up, 0:24:57.000 --> 0:25:01.480 or protecting our tribal community and in ways that we 0:25:01.560 --> 0:25:05.200 can imagine, and have the children raised in that environment 0:25:05.720 --> 0:25:09.080 do the same in their lives and have those head 0:25:09.160 --> 0:25:12.040 right moneyies coming in and they're building wealth. But that 0:25:12.119 --> 0:25:15.840 was never gonna happen to us because of all these 0:25:15.880 --> 0:25:20.359 different interests from the outside that were bent on either 0:25:21.080 --> 0:25:24.200 exploiting the laws, or bending the law or ignoring the 0:25:24.320 --> 0:25:27.679 law to get away with whatever they would needed to 0:25:27.680 --> 0:25:30.960 do to get their hands on the money. It's hard 0:25:31.000 --> 0:25:33.360 to know how many head rights left oh s Age 0:25:33.400 --> 0:25:36.520 ownership because of the reign of terror. A big part 0:25:36.560 --> 0:25:39.600 of that is because very few people were investigated back then, 0:25:40.080 --> 0:25:44.040 much less convicted. The most famous conviction from that time 0:25:44.240 --> 0:25:47.320 was of a rancher named William K. Hale, who was 0:25:47.359 --> 0:25:50.560 accused of masterminding the murders of several oh s Ages. 0:25:51.240 --> 0:25:54.040 He only got caught because the oth Age Nation hired 0:25:54.080 --> 0:25:58.040 the FBI to look into the murders dollars out of 0:25:58.080 --> 0:26:02.159 pocket to get federal authority used to investigate. Yeah, this 0:26:02.200 --> 0:26:05.000 took a long time to get this guy behind bars. 0:26:05.800 --> 0:26:09.600 He had vast resources at his disposal that you know, 0:26:10.320 --> 0:26:15.280 manipulated the media that influenced the judges, influenced juries, influenced 0:26:15.280 --> 0:26:19.879 the prosecutors, and public sentiment was all in his favor 0:26:19.920 --> 0:26:24.359