![]() And what this did was it made a lot of provisions and laws for Oklahoma to enter into the union. There was an act that was put in place called the Oklahoma Enabling Act. And this goes back to Oklahoma statehood. ![]() Herrera: So that’s a really good question. I haven’t adjusted that for inflation, but that’s a lot of money.īen-Achour: What kind of legal landscape developed around this? said that 18 years after the Osage Nation was allotted, white guardians were paid more than $8 million from their own Osage ward accounts. Or you may remember a scene from the film “Killers of the Flower Moon” where Mollie Burkhart has to go into the office and she has to read off her allotment number and say “incompetent.” And so that’s basically the system that people operated under. So in 1912, the United States government passed this law that said Osage citizens who are more than half blood were deemed incompetent. The policy was first implemented, ultimately, to protect Osages from being exploited by non-Indians, but it ended up not being that way. It has a long legal history, which we see in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Can you explain what we see there?Īllison Herrera: Yes, guardianships stem from this racist, paternalistic policy that was put in place by the federal government in the early 20th century that basically deemed Native people incompetent to run their own affairs and manage their own money. But this is basically somebody else being granted the authority to tell you how you can and cannot spend your money. Sabri Ben-Achour: There is this legal concept of “guardianship.” People might be familiar with this from the story of Britney Spears, after she fought to have her guardian removed a couple years ago. ![]() She covers Indigenous Affairs, and her work can also be heard on the podcast from Bloomberg called “ In Trust.” Herrera spoke with “Marketplace Morning Report” host Sabri Ben-Achour, and the following is an edited transcript of their interview. And these financial guardianships were rife with corruption and theft.Īllison Herrera is a senior reporter for the investigative journalism outfit APM Reports, which is owned by the same parent company as Marketplace. ![]() Instead, financial guardians were put in charge of much of this money, because government policies deemed Osages unable to mange it themselves. But, as the film depicts, Osages were actually restricted from managing or spending the money as they wished. The Osage Indian Reservation was oil rich, and this led to immense wealth for the tribe. For November, we’re watching “ Killers of the Flower Moon,” which tells the story of the Osage Nation of Oklahoma in the early 20th century, and how its people were subject to exploitation and murder at the hands of settlers stealing their wealth. Every month, “Marketplace Morning Report” watches one film with economic or money themes as part of our Econ Extra Credit project. ![]()
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