Speaker 1: Pushkin. This episode of Cautionary Tales is produced in association
Speaker 1: with Apple Original Films. Their new movie, Killers of the
Speaker 1: Flower Moon, directed by Martin Scorsese, is now in theaters
Speaker 1: Osage County, Oklahoma. February nineteen twenty three. It's cold, very cold.
Speaker 1: The Deputy Sheriff and town Marshal of Fairfax are on
Speaker 1: the lookout for an abandoned car. When they see it
Speaker 1: the bottom of a rocky valley, they walk down to investigate.
Speaker 1: The driver is slumped over the steering wheel. Drunk, thinks
Speaker 1: the deputy, and he says as much. But he's not drunk.
Speaker 1: He's dead. The man's name is Henry Rohane. The school
Speaker 1: he was forced to go to, made him cut his hair,
Speaker 1: made him wear a suit, tried to beat his O
Speaker 1: Sage identity out of him. It was a terrible experience,
Speaker 1: but Henry roan had become rich thanks to his share
Speaker 1: of the lucrative head rights that directed oil revenue to
Speaker 1: the small number of people recognized as members of the
Speaker 1: O Sage Nation. Now he's been shot through the back
Speaker 1: of the head. There's no gun at the scene. This
Speaker 1: is no suicide. It's murder, and the man who ordered
Speaker 1: Henry Roan to be killed. Is the man who claimed
Speaker 1: to be his best friend, a man who would be
Speaker 1: a pall bearer at Roan's funeral. This is a follow
Speaker 1: up to our previous episode about the reign of terror
Speaker 1: which afflicted the O Sage people in nineteen twenty's Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: Members of the Osage were picked off to gain control
Speaker 1: of the oil which lay under their land. Others, such
Speaker 1: as Henry Rohan, were targeted as part of other equally
Speaker 1: dreadful schemes. My telling of the story owed a great
Speaker 1: deal to David Grand's book Killers of the Flower Moon
Speaker 1: and focused on what happened to a single family. If
Speaker 1: you haven't listened to that yet, I suggest you do.
Speaker 1: But this is more than the story of Molly Burkhardt
Speaker 1: and her murdered sisters and mother, Anna, Rita, Minnie and Lizzie.
Speaker 1: Countless O Sage people lost their lives, and many of
Speaker 1: the murders have never been solved. Even more, O Sage
Speaker 1: were swindled out of their land and exploited by a
Speaker 1: racist structure that treated them as incompetence. The impact on
Speaker 1: the community has left a mark for generations. I'm Tim
Speaker 1: Harford and you're listening to a special episode of Cautionary Tales.
Speaker 1: Killers of the Flower Moon has been adapted into a
Speaker 1: film by director Martin Scorsese and is out in theaters now.
Speaker 1: Scorsese's longtime collaborator, Robert Naniro plays William K. Hale, the
Speaker 1: man who orchestrated the murders of Molly Burkhardt's sisters and mother.
Speaker 1: But Hale was also found guilty of murdering Henry Roan,
Speaker 1: and it was Roan's death that led FBI agent Tom
Speaker 1: White to key clues that helped him crack the case.
Speaker 1: Henry Rohan's great grandson is Jim Roan Gray. Jim is
Speaker 1: a former principal chief of the o s Age Nation,
Speaker 1: and I'm delighted to say he joins me now. Jim
Speaker 1: Roan Gray, Welcome to caution Me Tales.
Speaker 2: Glad to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1: Well, we're so glad that you could join us. And Jim,
Speaker 1: I know you were born in Ocege County, but then
Speaker 1: you moved to Denver, Colorado as a child and stayed
Speaker 1: there until you were a teenager. So how much had
Speaker 1: you been told about the Osage reign of terror when
Speaker 1: you were growing up.
Speaker 2: To be honest, I think that many osay, just not
Speaker 2: just my mom, just didn't talk about those things that
Speaker 2: happened in the twenties. My mom, Henry Room's granddaughter, was
Speaker 2: born a couple of years after he was murdered, so
Speaker 2: the fact that she named me after him did give
Speaker 2: her reason to say his name won't be forgotten in
Speaker 2: the family and his story will hopefully continue to be told.
Speaker 2: But after we moved back to Oklahoma, there was a
Speaker 2: broadcast of the FBI story which was on.
Speaker 1: Television and this is a movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a movie. It was a bit of
Speaker 2: a propaganda to raise the profile of the FBI, and
Speaker 2: it was based in nineteen fifty nine, two years before
Speaker 2: I was born. And it was a show is starring
Speaker 2: Jimmy Stewart playing the FBI investigator who went down to
Speaker 2: Osage Country to crack the case of the Osage murders.
Speaker 2: But in their version, it was a fictional tribe, no
Speaker 2: connection to the Osage at all. But they kept Henry
Speaker 2: Run's name. Why they used Henry Run's name and left
Speaker 2: it in there and kept all the Osage elements out.
Speaker 2: I have no idea you're.
Speaker 1: Watching this movie, which is a puff piece for the FBI,
Speaker 1: that is about the suffering of a tribe, even though
Speaker 1: they've changed the name, and is about this FBI investigation.
Speaker 1: So you know, what did you learn from that? What
Speaker 1: did it feel like watching it?
Speaker 2: Well, of course I recognized the name, but I was
Speaker 2: a high school kid at the time. I was just
Speaker 2: a kid, you know, I knew who I was named after.
Speaker 2: So that gave an inkling of my exposure to this
Speaker 2: story in our family. The sad party is is that,
Speaker 2: you know, I just felt like I was not quite
Speaker 2: as connected to it because the FBI from their point
Speaker 2: of view, It wasn't from my point of view or
Speaker 2: my mom's or my tribes. It was the FBI. They
Speaker 2: solved all the crimes in o Sage Country and they left,
Speaker 2: so not much to take from that if you're in
Speaker 2: the Osage you know what I'm saying. Now. As I
Speaker 2: grew to be a young man, I started doing my
Speaker 2: own research and started reading books that had already been
Speaker 2: published at that time in the nineteen eighties and nineties
Speaker 2: and two thousands that helped fill in the gaps, so
Speaker 2: to speak.
Speaker 1: It has extraordinary that you were having to teach yourself
Speaker 1: about the history of what had happened.
Speaker 2: Many Osage families just did not want to talk about it,
Speaker 2: I think for many reasons, some of which were based
Speaker 2: on those that survived that period of time. The FBI
Speaker 2: came and they investigated these murders, and they brought justice
Speaker 2: to a couple of individuals who had committed these crimes,
Speaker 2: and then they left. What continued to happen in O
Speaker 2: Sage country is that people continued to die. Their life
Speaker 2: and wealth and land were all taken in various ways.
Speaker 2: The Osages came into an enormous amount of money in
Speaker 2: a very short period of time, and it was concentrated
Speaker 2: within a couple of thousand people. The Osa just suddenly
Speaker 2: fell into a higher income status that developed a fair
Speaker 2: amount of resentment among the rest of the population around us.
Speaker 2: Newspaper journalists of the day would write about the extravagant
Speaker 2: spending habits of certain O Sages, implying that all Osages
Speaker 2: were doing that and generating an enormous amount of interest
Speaker 2: in this, both good and bad, and all kinds of
Speaker 2: elements descended into the Osage community, bent on getting a
Speaker 2: cut of the action in whatever means they felt they
Speaker 2: could get away with. Some were store owners that issued
Speaker 2: credit to O Sages and overcharged exorbitant prices for basic
Speaker 2: everyday items like say, a hammer would cost one hundred
Speaker 2: dollars in nineteen twenty dollars, which would have put it
Speaker 2: somewhere over one thousand dollars today, and the BIA would
Speaker 2: just pay these bills and suddenly put these O Sages
Speaker 2: into debt, and these store owners would say, hey, this
Speaker 2: guy owes me money you can't pay, and they settle
Speaker 2: the debt by giving their sage land to these individuals,
Speaker 2: and they became credibly wealthy by doing that. Definitely, a
Speaker 2: fair amount of white collar crime was occurring under those
Speaker 2: federal policies of the day that allowed people the luxury
Speaker 2: of being able to direct the spending of O Sage
Speaker 2: money as well as who eventually inherited the Osage money,
Speaker 2: and there was a practice of marrying into the tribe
Speaker 2: that gave people enormous influence over that. But also the
Speaker 2: guardian systems that were imposed on O Sages who were
Speaker 2: half led O Sage or more every aspect of their
Speaker 2: life in terms of what they could spend money on,
Speaker 2: where they lived, where they shopped, who they hung out
Speaker 2: with everything was under the control of this guardian. This
Speaker 2: interest to the Osay just coming into that wealth created
Speaker 2: an incentive to kill osages for their money.
Speaker 1: I want to ask about your great grandfather, Henry Rohman.
Speaker 1: He was born, I think a little bit before the
Speaker 1: oil was discovered. Taught me through what you've learned about
Speaker 1: him and the situation he faced as he was growing up.
Speaker 2: One of the things that happened during that period of
Speaker 2: time after the so called Indian Wars of that era,
Speaker 2: Little Big Warned Wounded Knee and Chief Joseph and the
Speaker 2: Nez person Geronimo, and all these stories that came from
Speaker 2: Indian resistance. We saw a very hostile set of federal
Speaker 2: policies towards tribes and individual Indians, of punishment of some
Speaker 2: kind for just be an Indian. Lot of federal policies
Speaker 2: were bent on not only breaking up the collective landholdings
Speaker 2: of all the tribes through a process called allotment, but
Speaker 2: also the breakup of their tribal governments. So they were
Speaker 2: powerless really to defend themselves, to protect themselves, to advance
Speaker 2: their interest. And then adding to it one last piece,
Speaker 2: which was assimilation. And this is where they actually took
Speaker 2: children out of their homes, oftentimes against the will of
Speaker 2: their parents, and send them off to these re education
Speaker 2: camps called Indian boarding schools. They were there for years
Speaker 2: without much communication back to their families, and their clothes
Speaker 2: were burned, they were replaced with military uniforms, their hair
Speaker 2: was shaved, and they were paraded around in these photographs
Speaker 2: of kind of before and after pictures that these schools
Speaker 2: used to perpetuate the success of the program. What was
Speaker 2: behind those photographs was a series of beatings for Indian
Speaker 2: children who spoke their language. They were forced into servitude
Speaker 2: to local families that lived in the area to do
Speaker 2: menial labor. They were abused, some were molested, some were raped,
Speaker 2: some committed suicide. Some tried to run away and were
Speaker 2: beaten severely. This was also something that the o Sage
Speaker 2: families went through as well.
Speaker 1: And that's what happened to your great grandfather, Henry Rown.
Speaker 2: My great grandfather, was one such story. He spent his
Speaker 2: early years of his life in a boarding school in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 2: which is about one thousand miles away. He spent I
Speaker 2: think seven years there, basically robbed of a traditional Osage upbringing,
Speaker 2: and not really having much of a human connection. And
Speaker 2: I don't know whether or not he was beaten or
Speaker 2: molested or any of that. I do know that through
Speaker 2: some historical docum imments it was pretty clear he just
Speaker 2: wanted to be left alone when he got back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking at a photograph of him now as
Speaker 1: a schoolboy with short hair, and he's wearing a suit
Speaker 1: and he's wearing a tie. I'm sure you've seen the
Speaker 1: same photograph. And what it says to you when you
Speaker 1: see that image.
Speaker 2: Well, they tried to remove the osage that was a
Speaker 2: part of him and turn him into something else, often
Speaker 2: against his will. So I think that the image that
Speaker 2: tells me is that he probably didn't have the agency
Speaker 2: to be able to make his own choices about whether
Speaker 2: or not he wanted to be there. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: he married and had a family, but I feel like
Speaker 2: he struggled with his identity. And I think that's one
Speaker 2: of the outcomes of the boarding school experience is that
Speaker 2: not just Henry Rohan, but Indian children throughout the United
Speaker 2: States who went this experience came back I guess you
Speaker 2: could say damaged and not really fitting into the traditional
Speaker 2: Indian world. That they came from, but certainly not fitting
Speaker 2: into the white world because to them they were just
Speaker 2: another Indian. Henry's just one of many stories from that
Speaker 2: period of time, and others were treated worse and some
Speaker 2: never survived that experience. So the fact that he came back,
Speaker 2: you know, albeit maybe confused or a worse damaged because
Speaker 2: of it. Psychologically, it struggled to reclaim his O sage identities.
Speaker 2: You can tell as he's a young man. There's a
Speaker 2: picture of him where he's grown his hair out. You know,
Speaker 2: he's refusing to allow that boarding school experience to fine him.
Speaker 2: And I take some measure of comfort and knowing that
Speaker 2: that policy failed to achieve its goals, but it did
Speaker 2: lead to other unfortunate events that happened to him later
Speaker 2: in life. Henry row never got the therapy that he deserved, yeah,
Speaker 2: to recover from that experience.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking to Jim Roan Gray and after the break,
Speaker 1: I'll be talking to Jim about how his great grandfather,
Speaker 1: Henry Rohan got to know the murderous mastermind William K. Hale.
Speaker 1: Cautionary tales will be back in just a moment. Jim,
Speaker 1: you've described your great grandfather being taken away to this
Speaker 1: boarding school where he was subject to this process of
Speaker 1: trying to force him to assimilate. It's a thousand miles
Speaker 1: away from his family, and then he comes back and
Speaker 1: he's and you use the word damaged. You also told
Speaker 1: us that you have all of these characters circle Osage
Speaker 1: Country trying to one way or another get in on
Speaker 1: the oil money. That brings us to William Hale and
Speaker 1: his relationship with Henry Rohan.
Speaker 2: I could see the value that Hale got out of
Speaker 2: being friends with Henry Ron. I''m not sure what value
Speaker 2: Henry got out of being friends with William Hale other
Speaker 2: than the fact that this was a white, very popular,
Speaker 2: charismatic person in the community that had a lot of friends.
Speaker 2: You know, not just Henry Rowan, but many Osage just
Speaker 2: considered him a friend. During those days before the Reign of.
Speaker 1: Terror, William Hale was a poll bearer at your great
Speaker 1: grandfather's funeral and claimed to be a close friend. And
Speaker 1: yet all the time he had been moving behind the
Speaker 1: scenes to take advantage of Henry. Tell me about that.
Speaker 2: He claims he loaned money to Henry Ron and that
Speaker 2: was the justification for him taking the life insurance policy
Speaker 2: out on him. The attitude of white people towards Indians.
Speaker 2: It wasn't subtle, We'll just say that. And for him
Speaker 2: to make the claim, William hal had to shop his
Speaker 2: life insurance policy around to several different insurance providers. And
Speaker 2: the reason is that it looked like a setup and
Speaker 2: he was being set up. William Hale played on Henry's
Speaker 2: emotions by saying that his wife was cheating on him
Speaker 2: with a local white man in town. He claims he
Speaker 2: was doing his friend of favor by letting him know.
Speaker 2: I just know that the entire characterization of Henry Roan
Speaker 2: has been bred into this story by the person who
Speaker 2: ordered his killing, and I'm inclined to not take his
Speaker 2: word for any of this. Maybe Henry Roan heard something
Speaker 2: that he shouldn't have. And there's also rumors that there
Speaker 2: was a traditional wedding between Molly Burkhardt and Henry Rown
Speaker 2: years before she ever met Ernest.
Speaker 1: So let me get this straight. Your great grandfather might
Speaker 1: have been married to Molly before she married William Hale's
Speaker 1: nephew Ernest Burkhardt, and could potentially make a claim to
Speaker 1: the Headwright that William Hale was plotting to secure for himself.
Speaker 2: They did organize marriages back in those days. It wasn't uncommon,
Speaker 2: but given the times and what Henry had gone through
Speaker 2: at Carlisle Boarding School in Pennsylvania, the marriage didn't succeed
Speaker 2: and they went their different ways. A traditional marriage could
Speaker 2: be something that Henry Rohan could make a claim for.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, there's lots of theories about
Speaker 2: that relationship, some of which we'll never know. One's only
Speaker 2: left to speculate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've alluded that to Henry struggling to settle into
Speaker 1: married life, and like many people who survived the boarding
Speaker 1: school system, he wasn't known to drink, and William Hale
Speaker 1: played on that, didn't he.
Speaker 2: My view is that to take William Hale's account of
Speaker 2: the worth and value of Henry Rohan's life would be
Speaker 2: stupid because he's using it to defend himself. I mean,
Speaker 2: the fact that this case went through so many different
Speaker 2: courts and had to be retried multiple times before they
Speaker 2: ever got around it getting him convicted speaks a lot
Speaker 2: to mainstream society's perception of the value of Indian people's lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Hale had arranged somehow to be the beneficiary of
Speaker 1: Henry Rohan's life insurance policy, and then Hale had his
Speaker 1: cronious murder Henry Rohan. So what I'm hearing from you
Speaker 1: is everything else that was said about Henry Rohan's drinking
Speaker 1: and maybe there was an affair, and maybe this and
Speaker 1: maybe that. Yeah, well maybe, but we can't rely on
Speaker 1: any of that because that's all the snake screen for
Speaker 1: the bald fact of the case.
Speaker 2: Exactly right.
Speaker 1: But those facts did, in the end put Tom White
Speaker 1: of the Buereau of Investigations onto the case. That seemed
Speaker 1: to be a very important step in the unlocking of
Speaker 1: the murders that were solved. I hear what you said
Speaker 1: that not all the murders were sold by any means,
Speaker 1: but it was important in putting Hale behind bars in
Speaker 1: the end.
Speaker 2: Well, you got to understand too, that it wasn't until
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty four, a year after Henrion was murdered, that
Speaker 2: the United States recognized the indigenous communities in this country
Speaker 2: as US citizens. And so it wasn't just bad people,
Speaker 2: it was bad federal policy with assimilation, allotment, the breakup
Speaker 2: of tribal governments, and the fact that we were one
Speaker 2: of the last people in this country to get recognized
Speaker 2: as being US citizens. We were inferior, We were subhuman.
Speaker 2: We weren't entitled to anything other than suffering and being
Speaker 2: at the beck and call of people who believed in
Speaker 2: the manifest destiny of God gave us this right to
Speaker 2: colonize this entire continent, even if it came at the
Speaker 2: expense of millions of indigenous people who got in the
Speaker 2: way of that. There was still that mentality that existed
Speaker 2: and not a pretty chapter in American history. But this
Speaker 2: movie is bringing a lot of these elements into light now.
Speaker 2: I want to make sure that your listeners understand that
Speaker 2: our resilience and our stubbornness got us through that, and
Speaker 2: our willingness to adopt certain aspects of the dominant culture
Speaker 2: and accept them as part of a way of life,
Speaker 2: but not giving in entirely to all the things that
Speaker 2: made us o sage is what helped us survive that
Speaker 2: period of time. And as we modernized our tribal government
Speaker 2: years later, when I was chief, we were able to
Speaker 2: prioritize the resources of our tribe to invest in the
Speaker 2: health and education and the cultural and language preservation initiatives
Speaker 2: that resulted in our ability to collaborate with Scorsese in
Speaker 2: such a way that showcased the oce age culture as
Speaker 2: an elemental part, almost literally a character in this film
Speaker 2: that retained the dignity of our people and respect for
Speaker 2: the ancestors who were tragically murdered during that period of time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you must have heard about the book
Speaker 1: Killers of the Flower Moon, the bestseller, and then you
Speaker 1: hear Martin Scorsese wants to make it into a film.
Speaker 1: How did that feel when you heard that was happening.
Speaker 2: It was kind of a one two punch. Actually, the
Speaker 2: movie rights were sold before the book even became public.
Speaker 2: The reader's interest in this story was overwhelming, and it
Speaker 2: became the number one bookseller on Amazon that year, and
Speaker 2: it was heralded as a very important piece of literature
Speaker 2: and a true crime story that was largely forgotten in
Speaker 2: the pages of history. And so David Grant had brought
Speaker 2: all of this to light. And then word got out
Speaker 2: that Martin Scorsese had read the book and expressed an
Speaker 2: interest in making this into a film, and the people
Speaker 2: had legitimate concerns. Hollywood as an industry doesn't have a
Speaker 2: very good track record of telling indigenous stories accurately. Many
Speaker 2: of us worried that in Scorsese's hand, the violence might
Speaker 2: overtake the story, and we wanted to express our concerns
Speaker 2: about o sages who were descendants of the people who
Speaker 2: were murdered, like myself, got together and wrote to Scorsese
Speaker 2: and said, we would like to meet with you and
Speaker 2: talk about what your intentions are with this film, how
Speaker 2: our answertors are going to be treated in the story.
Speaker 2: This is a painful story for our people. We would
Speaker 2: like to invite you to break bread with us, eat
Speaker 2: here with us, and meet with us in our community.
Speaker 2: And just Coorsese's credit, he did come, and he brought
Speaker 2: his whole team with him, just not just himself, but
Speaker 2: all the people that has worked on his films going
Speaker 2: back decades.
Speaker 1: What did he say to him.
Speaker 2: Well, that was obviously starstruck, just like everyone else. I mean,
Speaker 2: he's only eight feet away from me, and I'm talking
Speaker 2: to a group of one hundred and fifty oh sages
Speaker 2: in the room, and each one of us were a
Speaker 2: little uncomfortable, you know, but we got over it. I
Speaker 2: talked to him from a standpoint of just there are
Speaker 2: elements of this story that are in this book that
Speaker 2: are historically accurate, but the O Sage culture as how
Speaker 2: we saw the world and how we interact with one another,
Speaker 2: and how we deal with crisis, and how we cling
Speaker 2: to our culture using the resources that we had at
Speaker 2: the time as a way to achieve the resilience that
Speaker 2: was needed to get through that period of time. That
Speaker 2: wasn't contained in the book, but it is found in
Speaker 2: this room, in the lives and the stories of the
Speaker 2: descendants of those that were victims of that period of
Speaker 2: time of those crimes. I told him, you have an
Speaker 2: opportunity to do something that Hollywood hasn't done before, or
Speaker 2: your industry hasn't done before. Other famous movies of the past,
Speaker 2: like Dances with Wolve's Little Big Man and Last the
Speaker 2: Mohicans were all written by non Indians and a fictionalized
Speaker 2: story about what happened to those tribes, and it had
Speaker 2: this white savior element to it, you know, And none
Speaker 2: of those things are present in this story. And nobody
Speaker 2: in this room wants you to fail to the extent
Speaker 2: that you'll let us. We want to help you in
Speaker 2: every way we can. And I ended the statement with
Speaker 2: be the director to make that film, be the director
Speaker 2: to make that film that your industry will point to
Speaker 2: in the future and say that's the one we got. Right.
Speaker 1: Do you think he succeeded?
Speaker 2: From my experience, he honored his word when he said
Speaker 2: he would work the script and he would consult with
Speaker 2: the tribe, and he did, in fact consult with the
Speaker 2: tribe and integrated enormous amounts of Osage art, culture, language,
Speaker 2: spirituality into this story. He elevated the o Sage as
Speaker 2: the heart of the story. The costume designs were incorporated
Speaker 2: with Osage consultants that provided the accuracy that was necessary
Speaker 2: to capture how Osage is dressed during that period of time,
Speaker 2: how Osa just spoke during that period of time, what
Speaker 2: made them laugh? You know, that collaboration allowed the presence
Speaker 2: of the people to make a meaningful contribution to the story.
Speaker 2: However dark it is, at least the viewer who sits
Speaker 2: through this will know the humanity of the Osage people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I think he succeeded in that. This movie. Is
Speaker 2: it going to change the world, I doubt it, but
Speaker 2: it's going to hopefully start a conversation about how we
Speaker 2: got here.
Speaker 1: After the break, I'll be talking to Jim Roan Gray
Speaker 1: about the O Sage community today, the impact of the
Speaker 1: reign of terror and the lessons we should all learn
Speaker 1: from what happened. We're back. I was speaking to Jim
Speaker 1: Roan Gray. So you became the i think the youngest
Speaker 1: principal chief of the O Sage nation in two thousand
Speaker 1: and two, served until twenty ten. What did that role
Speaker 1: entail and why do you want it?
Speaker 2: Well, the nineteen oh six Act did a couple of things.
Speaker 2: Besides protecting us with the mineral estate. That gets all
Speaker 2: the attention. What never got enough attention, in my opinion,
Speaker 2: was the fact that when they issued out those two
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty nine shares to those O Sages on
Speaker 2: the rolls, they closed the roles by federal law. They
Speaker 2: closed them. So in the eyes of the federal law,
Speaker 2: the only O Sages they recognized were those original allottees.
Speaker 2: And injustice had occurred where one fourth of O Sages
Speaker 2: were considered members of the tribe while three fourths of
Speaker 2: the Osages were not, simply because they did not have
Speaker 2: an interest in the Osage mineral estate, which was something
Speaker 2: that their parents had. And so fast forward to two
Speaker 2: thousand and two, I'm running for chief and we only
Speaker 2: have nine original Lattees still alive. An open question was
Speaker 2: raised as to what would happen to the Osage Nations
Speaker 2: relationship with the United States if the last original Lattee
Speaker 2: passes away, because that part of the Osage Allotment Act
Speaker 2: had never been amended over those last one hundred years.
Speaker 2: And so I ran on the issue of addressing that issue,
Speaker 2: and members of the tribal Council who also ran for
Speaker 2: a seat on the council, also ran on an issue,
Speaker 2: and in that election, nine out of the ten elected
Speaker 2: positions in the tribe were turned out and replaced with
Speaker 2: people who had that reform minded message of fixing that
Speaker 2: membership issue. And so that created the change that allowed
Speaker 2: all these sages who had been left off the rolls
Speaker 2: for generations to say, sudden they come back on and
Speaker 2: not just governed under a structure that was imposed on
Speaker 2: them in nineteen oh six, but a part of a
Speaker 2: government that includes them in a constitution that recognizes their
Speaker 2: active involvement in the tribe and provisions in a constitution
Speaker 2: that prioritizes language and land and cultural preservation. It's the
Speaker 2: constitution that Osages wrote, not the one that the United
Speaker 2: States wrote. And so when you allow the tribe to
Speaker 2: reorganize under its own sovereignty, what you ended up with
Speaker 2: as a tribe that was more bent on unity than
Speaker 2: it was on divisiveness, that was more interested in culture
Speaker 2: and language preservation than about the oil and gas industry
Speaker 2: and the priorities of the tribe. With all these new
Speaker 2: voices in the room, has made the Osage Nation a
Speaker 2: completely different place than what it was in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: What do you think Henry Rohan would have made of
Speaker 1: all this if he could see it?
Speaker 2: Man, that's a good question. I just don't think he
Speaker 2: ever had a chance to dream of a future beyond
Speaker 2: what was his present. I just trying to imagine being
Speaker 2: boarded on a railroad card taking him a thousand miles
Speaker 2: away from his home, in this environment where he was
Speaker 2: just slave labor and treated like a second class citizen.
Speaker 2: I just I feel just sad that these policies damaged
Speaker 2: in a lot of lives. And I'm not just talking
Speaker 2: about my great grandfather. I'm talking about generations of Indian
Speaker 2: people across the United States, not just o Sages. I
Speaker 2: just I just feel like his the system failed him
Speaker 2: in many many ways, and the fact that his great
Speaker 2: grandson went on to become a chief is one. I
Speaker 2: hoped that he would take some pride in that I
Speaker 2: was able to accomplish as much as I did while
Speaker 2: I was chief. He might have some pride in that.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I hope he would have.
Speaker 1: When you look around you at the oce Age community today,
Speaker 1: can you still trace the impact of the reign of
Speaker 1: terror from the nineteen twenties? Is it still having an effect?
Speaker 2: When I was chief, the previous chief had already filed
Speaker 2: a lawsuit in federal court claiming a breach of the
Speaker 2: trust relationship between the United States and the Osage Nation.
Speaker 2: And in this federal court of claims, the burden of
Speaker 2: proved fell on the Sage is to prove there was mismanagement.
Speaker 2: We were able to systematically prove that they consistently, over decades,
Speaker 2: fil to get the highest yield of oil. What money
Speaker 2: they did collect, did they invested in the places that
Speaker 2: would maximize the benefit of that before the money was
Speaker 2: paid out to the individuals. And we were able to
Speaker 2: prove that they failed to do that. And so in
Speaker 2: the years that took place from the nineteen oh six
Speaker 2: Act to the time I was chief. In the two thousands,
Speaker 2: we were talking about one hundred years right, the United
Speaker 2: States finally agreed to settle somewhere close to four hundred
Speaker 2: million dollars. It was a mixed blessing of sorts because
Speaker 2: over those years, and through the actions of people like
Speaker 2: William Hale and others who had found a way to
Speaker 2: get their hands on osage head right shares, I think
Speaker 2: twenty five percent of the osage head rights are now
Speaker 2: in non osage hands today. So when we achieved this
Speaker 2: historic settlement, imagine how it hit O Sage is Knowing
Speaker 2: that one fourth of that settlement went to non O
Speaker 2: Sage entities. That hurt a lot of people's sense of justice.
Speaker 2: That we're still not there yet.
Speaker 1: And how are people processing what happened and what has
Speaker 1: continued to happen on a more personal level. You've given
Speaker 1: us the legal picture in the political picture, but families
Speaker 1: are also of course having to talk about or not
Speaker 1: talk about, what was done.
Speaker 2: A lot of them don't to just wallow in the
Speaker 2: suffering of what happened. Isn't going to bring anybody joy.
Speaker 2: What good is that going to serve? As my mom
Speaker 2: would say. I think what she tried to encourage me
Speaker 2: to do was to, you know, not forget it, but
Speaker 2: don't let it define you. Take the experience of our
Speaker 2: ancestors and try to live a better life for yourself,
Speaker 2: for your family, for your tribe. Use it as a
Speaker 2: foundation upon which we could build a better Osage nation.
Speaker 2: That is the only healthy way to achieve some perspective.
Speaker 2: I can certainly respect any decision any Osh has about
Speaker 2: not wanting to come forward and talk about it. But
Speaker 2: I've chosen to make myself available to folks like yourself
Speaker 2: simply because I want your listeners to know that we
Speaker 2: don't live like victims. Even though we were victims of
Speaker 2: horrible crimes back then, we don't live like victims today.
Speaker 1: Cautioning Tales is a podcast about learning from the mistakes
Speaker 1: of the past. So what lessons should we learn both
Speaker 1: from this narrow and horrible story of the reign of
Speaker 1: terror and from the broader story of the Ice Age Nation.
Speaker 2: Well, there was a spe each I heard from a
Speaker 2: tribal elder from Canada. He said, you want us to assimilate,
Speaker 2: You want us to integrate, You want us to be
Speaker 2: a part of the larger society. And if you're asking
Speaker 2: me to abandon everything that I knew to be true
Speaker 2: my entire life so you can teach me your way,
Speaker 2: I would ask you, if you truly want integration, then
Speaker 2: you have to find a place in your world for
Speaker 2: our world, because integration cannot be a one way street.
Speaker 2: There has to be something of value that my community
Speaker 2: has that you need, and until you can make room
Speaker 2: for that, I will resist your attempts. My tribe has
Speaker 2: established a way to coexist with the world around us
Speaker 2: for eons before you even arrived here, and yet you
Speaker 2: don't value any of that experience. Until that happens, I'm
Speaker 2: going to have.
Speaker 1: To stay here.
Speaker 2: And I feel like that as a way to answer
Speaker 2: your question, is that what can be learned from this
Speaker 2: dark chapter is maybe a question I should ask you.
Speaker 2: I've done my best to try to answer it for
Speaker 2: my own people, But will society learn anything? There's another
Speaker 2: question that I can't answer. No.
Speaker 1: I guess what really struck me the more I found
Speaker 1: out about what happened in the nineteen twenties is that
Speaker 1: not only did I not know any of this, I
Speaker 1: had no idea what I didn't know. And the more
Speaker 1: I find out, the more shaken I am by my
Speaker 1: capacity to have not known things about history that I
Speaker 1: should done. So I'm going to keep reading and listening
Speaker 1: and trying to learn a bit more. I'm sure I'm
Speaker 1: going to keep discovering stuff that I didn't know and
Speaker 1: should have known all along.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's the start, and maybe you will
Speaker 2: find others that will share that view, and hopefully it
Speaker 2: could lead to some better outcomes in the future.
Speaker 1: Let's hope. So, Jim Ron Gray, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for talking to me.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I've been talking to Jim Roan Gray, former principal chief
Speaker 1: of the Osage Nation. Jim's great grandfather, Henry Roan is
Speaker 1: played by William Below in the film Killers of the
Speaker 1: Flower Moon, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Lily Gladstone,
Speaker 1: Robert de Niro, and Leonardo DiCaprio. The film is in
Speaker 1: movie theaters now. We will be back again on our
Speaker 1: regular schedule with another cautionary Tale on Friday, November tenth,
Speaker 1: all about the importance of archives and the disastrous consequences
Speaker 1: of failing to preserve them. Cautionary Tales is written by me,
Speaker 1: Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Alice Fines
Speaker 1: with support from Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original
Speaker 1: music is the work of Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited
Speaker 1: the scripts. It features the voice talents of Ben Crowe,
Speaker 1: Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Jemmy Saunders and Rufus Wright. The
Speaker 1: show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne, Vital Mollard, John Schnaz,
Speaker 1: Eric Handler, Carrie Brody and Christina Sullivan. Cautionary Tales is
Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at ward Or
Speaker 1: Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like the show,
Speaker 1: please remember to share, rate and review, tell your friends
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