Native Voices: Osage Representation in Film

David:

Welcome to Disarming Data, it's Paige and me, David, talking to extraordinary people about interesting things and extraordinary things they've done. The twist is we're doing so from two generations. I'm an old boomer.

Paige:

I'm a millennial who grew up in the tech generation.

David:

I don't know anything about tech, I usually lose my cell phone rather than use my cell phone. I'm a tech novice, but in this podcast I think I can handle it because we're going to be talking to some really interesting people, including psychologists, chefs, undercover agents, active veterans, and on and on.

Paige:

And Dad, you forgot about whistleblowers and other people who are interesting and influential to us.

David:

And Paige, you forgot to say thank you for listening to the show.

Paige:

Thanks for listening.

Hi everyone, welcome to Disarming Data. This is a podcast where we talk about a bunch of different topics from two generational perspectives. I'm Paige, I'm the millennial, and today my dad is on.

David:

Don't forget I'm the old guy, right, I'm the boomer.

Paige:

Yeah, my boomer father. Today we have an amazing guest, Joel Robinson, who wrote a really interesting article that I feel like we'll go more into depth about that I really enjoyed reading. And just to start out, Joel, could you just talk about your background, where you're from, what you do now.

David:

But before, we got to just say the article was about Joel's perspective as an Osage on the film and it went viral. It went totally viral, so it's really big, big time. So congratulations, sorry to interrupt.

Joel:

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so like Paige said, my name is Joel. I am a citizen of the Osage Nation and I live in Louisville, Kentucky. I've been a member of the tribe since our membership requirements changed in 2004 I believe. I have a bachelor's from Eastern Kentucky University in recreational park administration and a masters from Northwestern State University in partial recreation management, same field.

Currently, I work as an evening/weekend studies coordinator at a trade school in Simpsonville, Kentucky.

Paige:

How does the membership work, just for us that don't really know much about-

Joel:

So this is actually something I learned yesterday when I was talking to one of our former chiefs. So it used to be, to be recognized by the federal government as an Osage, you had to be a headrights holder of that oil money that is talked about extensively in the film. And so our membership was very small and then when the former Chief Jim Gray was in office, he along with his counsel, made it so that a new law was passed so that if you can trace your lineage to an original Allottee, we call it, one of the people that originally had a headright when that role closed back in 1906, you could enroll as a member of the tribe. So that opened it up for my brother, myself, my dad, etc.

David:

Who'd you trace yourself back to Joel?

Joel:

Yeah, so my original Allottees are my great-grandfather, Ace Bradshaw. Sorry, he was born after the role. So his mother, my two-times-great-grandma Rose Ella Mosher who her married name was Bradshaw, and her father Thomas Mosher and his wife, Adeline Perrier, who obviously married into the name Mosher. Doing research I found in either the History of Oklahoma or the History of the Osage People, these two books that were written back 20th century at some point, I found where it mentioned my two-times-great-grandpa George Bradshaw, and it said, "George Bradshaw married into one of the most prominent families of Osage citizens." I'm like, "Oh, that's my family. That's cool."

David:

That is cool.

Paige:

What it was like before discovering oil, how they discovered the oil, and sort of the story of the Osage people?

Joel:

So I don't have the most robust knowledge on it admittedly. So kind of the Cliff Notes version I know is that we had this massive territory in the Plains area, like Missouri/Kansas region. We were then put onto a reservation in Kansas, which was then most of was taken by settlers, so our reservation became much smaller, and then from there we were moved again to a reservation in present-day Oklahoma. And the unique thing about our land is that we actually purchased it from the Cherokee Nation. So the federal government doesn't own our land, we own it. If you look at a map of tribal land in the United States, you'll see a couple areas in Oklahoma, and the one top right is our reservation because we've owned it outright the whole time.

There is a time back in the '50s, Chief Gray was telling me yesterday, where the federal government at the time, they wanted to stop recognizing my nation as well as a couple others that had financial resources. We had the oil obviously, and the other two tribes, I can't remember what their names are, but they had forestry. So we had these industries that were bringing wealth into our nations and the government wanted to quit federally recognizing us as tribes, which essentially reduces nations into

clubs of people that share the same background. Because with us being recognized as tribes, that allows us to have our inherent sovereignty that we've had as nations since before the federal government was founded for this country. To do that would've had a disastrous effect on our tribes and actually did to the other two tribes. But we sent two people to lobby Washington and they did so until the Osage got removed from that bill, and so we were able to survive that, which is lovely.

Then there's a gap between then and now that I'm not too familiar with admittedly. But the former chief, like I said, Jim Gray, he served from 2002 to 2010 as our principal chief, and while he was in office, they not only opened the roles so that our membership grew by thousands, but they also started things like the language department, the cultural center, these things that are resources to us today.

And the language was going to die out with the only native speakers that we still had at the time, so what Chief Gray did was he brought in these language speakers, created the department. We have a man named Mogri, his nickname is Mogri, Herman Lookout, he worked with linguists to create orthography for our language so that it can be written down because as native peoples, our language, our traditions are oral and we have stories that just get passed down, passed down, and they're not usually written. So he created an orthography, like a writing system for our language. We're one of the only tribes in America that has a written orthography for our language, which is really cool. Yet we have language classes going on, we have all this stuff. It's a good time to be Osage for sure.

Paige:

Oh, that's awesome.

David:

Have you been back to Oklahoma? Because you're in Kentucky, right, so is the nation dispersed throughout the country or how is it?

Joel:

Yeah, I believe our current Chief Standing Bear, he said about half of Osage do not live in Oklahoma, obviously, myself included. There are reasons for that. For example, my cousin's ancestors, when the reign of terror started happening, they just moved and a lot of other people just moved away, and so that's part of the dispersal. Obviously there are other reasons as well like jobs and education, etc, etc. Growing up I went every few years, which I've done my best to maintain. I think the last time I went was probably 2018, so do need to go back. I'm going to try to go back this summer for our dances.

Paige:

And just out of curiosity, what are the dances?

Joel:

Our dances take place in July. I have not been before, so I'm not sure what all they entail. I do know that what we call the Lashonka takes place during that time, and that's our sacred dance. To an outsider, it can look like a powwow, but there's a very intentional sequence that the dancers go through and it's a very cool thing.

Paige:

Is that kind of a time where a lot of people go back to the tribe?

Joel:

Yeah, for sure.

David:

Yeah. I think that was described at the end of that book, the book, not the movie, I think he described that and it was cool. Everyone came back and he came back and it was circles and circles and I think the way you described it-

Joel:

Yeah, there's a book by, I believe it's Alice Ann Callahan. I have it on my shelf over there. It's called Lashonka: the Osage Ceremonial Dance.

David:

Oh, wow.

Joel:

Yeah. You or your listeners can pick up a copy of that book and learn about it that way.

Paige:

Could you talk about, if you don't mind, the Reign of Terror from your perspective, kind of what it was?

Joel:

Yeah, so I mean I've heard this story all my life growing up. Yeah, my great-grandfather didn't talk about it a lot. He died before I was born, but my dad and my grandma always have said that he didn't talk about it. I kind of equate it to people coming back from a war, they just don't talk about it because it's such a trying, traumatic time.

So essentially oil was discovered under the land that we purchased from the Cherokee when James Bigheart, our chief at the time, created our Allotment Act along with his council. In it, we as a tribe maintain the mineral rights for anything that was found under our soil. So when this oil boom happened on our reservation, the government had to, per our allotment agreement, pay out these massive sums of money to each headright holder that I discussed a little bit ago.

What that prompted to do was, one, there was media coverage that was very racist, as I'm sure you can guess. It was a lot of these, "The rich Indians that didn't know how to spend their money and that didn't work for their money," and all this stuff. And so there was a very negative perspective of us already because we're not white, but then also because the media is framing us as people who don't deserve what we've gotten when it's our land that we are on because we got kicked off of this land and then that land, etc.

So what it prompted to do was it prompted people to come in and start swindling and murdering Osage for our oil money. There's another book I read, I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head, but it said that these businesses in [inaudible 00:12:19] and just on Osage land in general, they would have an Osage price for something and they would have a regular price for something because they know the Osage had this money that they could spend. It was very exploitative, everything was, and that continued with the guardianship system where the federal government decided that the Osage were not competent to handle their own money so they would appoint white guardians who would, again,

swindle the people that they were the guardians of. They had to get permission to buy toothpaste, to buy bread, to buy anything, and a lot of times that would get declined so they wouldn't have what they needed. Meanwhile, their guardians are just openly stealing money for them, so it was not a good time.

Paige:

Wow. Were the Cherokee kind of annoyed, do you know, whence the oil was discovered on the land that was purchased from them?

Joel:

I'm not sure. I would have to look into that.

Paige:

I was just curious. I feel like they would be like, "Oh, we shouldn't have sold that plot."

David:

Well, one, there's a lot of books written about this, and then obviously the movie was one of the reasons you wrote your article. And I just want to get your perspective, it's in the article, but get your perspective on the movie, the book that led to the movie, the other books, how that history's been told, and whether you think that the History's faithfully told in probably the most popular depiction, which would be the movie.

Joel:

Yeah, I think that the movie is told from more of the perspective of the people committing the crimes, specifically Ernest. I think much of the movie is told through Ernest, and I don't think that's the most in- depth way to tell it. But I do think that for an audience that's never been exposed to the story before, it is a good angle to give people to enter into the story to then do stuff like listen to podcasts, read books, and learn more about what happened outside of that perspective.

Also, I don't think that Scorsese is the best one to tell this story from the Osage perspective. I think that would take an Osage to do. But yeah, like you said, there are other tellings. There's a book by Lawrence Hogan who is an FBI agent. I haven't read it myself, but I do believe that it is told from the FBI's perspective. I actually know someone who lived next to Lawrence Hogan for years and read that book. It's really cool to learn about these different tellings, right?

There's also a book called A Pipe for February by Charles H. Red Corn, which I mentioned in my piece, but it is classified as a fiction book. I asked Chief Gray about it and he said that Charles told him that he marked it as fiction so he could tell the truth because it's that unbelievable, that inflammatory of a story. It's a telling of the Reign of Terror from the Osage perspective of an Osage living through it. And so my hope, like I said in my article, is that an Osage will be able to tell that story on the screen so that Killers of the Flower Moon and A Pipe for February can exist as companion pieces as these flip sides of the same coin.

Paige:

Yeah, I remember because I actually didn't read Killers of the Flower Moon, but I think I read an article in the New Yorker a long time ago that I had kind of talked about, and that was the first I had heard about this at all because it's not exactly something they teach you in school growing up. I do remember seeing the movie and my biggest complaint about it was I felt like I wanted Molly's perspective to be more ...

Joel:

Right, and to your point in Oklahoma right now, you can't teach this. You can't teach this, you can't teach the Tulsa Race Massacre. It's a trying time to be a teacher in Oklahoma, to my understanding. The Superintendent of Education there is not allowing that to happen. But I would love to see something from Molly's perspective, but again, I think that would need to be something done by an Osage. And Molly's not here with us, and so it's a matter of can we tell her story in a way that's faithful to her and to her experiences.

David:

I read the book that led to the Move, which I thought it was good. It was really well done. As you said in your article, it's very journalistic and he's a good writer. And he did follow Molly and Molly, she was like one of the few survivors there. I mean it was very devastating.

Joel:

Yeah, yeah. It's also important to note that with the book and the movie, they do focus on the Kyle Sisters, Molly, Rita, Minnie, and Anna, but there were scores of murders. For the Smithsonian Channel, David Bishop did a little documentary short episode, I believe it's like 45 minutes long, where he goes through his ancestors and he had one that he was told died from some mysterious illness, and it was in that time period. And the more he dug up, the more he realized that she was a victim of this. So yeah, there were, like I said, scores of murders, and so it's not just limited to this one family, but introducing an audience that doesn't know about the story to a family is definitely an easier way to get them to understand what's going on I think.

David:

You mentioned Hogan from the FBI. What is your thought about the FBI's role there and whether they were successful or whether ... Well, I'll just let you answer the question.

Joel:

I mean they were successful in the case of Bill Smith and Ernest Burkhart, but they didn't stay to figure out everything, figure out the scope and all of that. Our people got through this by relying on each other. We weren't saved by the FBI or anything like that. So were they successful? In that specific instance, if you look at it through a very narrow lens, yes, you can say that they were. However, did they solve it, did they save us? No, they came, they saw, they did a little bit. They left. They got the glory.

Paige:

Yeah, I felt that in the movie a little bit too. When I saw it, I just felt like ... I remember because there was kind of rumors that went around the FBI started for this ... Someone had said that the FBI started for the Osage people. Is that true?

Joel:

Yeah, yeah.

Paige:

Because in my mind, I was like, "Okay."

Joel:

This was their first big case, the Kills of the Flower Moon, the subtitle is the Osage Murders and Birth of the FBI.

Paige:

Oh, wow.

Joel:

So yeah, this was their first big ... They were contracting and drafting in to help all these agents from around the country that weren't affiliated with what was then known as the Bureau of Investigation because it was so new that they didn't have a staff yet.

Paige:

And then another question I have is when did the guardianship, or did it, did it ever end, and where is the oil now? Is it all gone or what has kind of transpired?

Joel:

Yeah, there's still oil. It is much less now than it used to be. My grandma currently has the headright that's passed down to her from my two times great grandma, and it gets split between siblings by generation. So when she passes, her portion of that original headright, it'll go to my dad and his two sisters. When my dad passes, it'll get split between my brother and myself. So it is both very diluted and not as much as it used to be. But yeah, the oil money is still there. It's been what, 100 years, if that. So yeah, this is not ancient history either. The shadow of it is still present for sure. And then as for the guardianship, I will look into that. I'm not sure. Let me see if I can find that.

Paige:

But it's not currently one of the issues with it.

Joel:

Right, right.

Paige:

Okay.

David:

So how did it come to an end? Because it was going on and as you said, the FBI, they had the one case, how did it come to an end, the Reign of Terror?

Joel:

Well, I just saw that guardianship ended in 1934.

Paige: Okay.

Joel:

So it lasted about as long as the Reign of Terror did, which makes sense. I will have to look into that as well. I would assume that guardianship played a massive role in that. But like I said, my great- grandfather was the one that was alive during that time. He never really talked about it. So the information I have about it is not as robust and full of a picture as I would like to have.

Paige:

Yeah, I think I can really, because my grandma was in a Japanese internment camp and she just really never talks about it, so it's definitely part of our family history. But I also don't really know because they don't really teach you about that in school either.

Joel:

Yeah, our education system has a lot of issues. Most states don't mention a single Native American in their K through 12 curriculum at all, and the vast majority of K through 12 history curriculums don't teach Native Americans post-1900. So that I think leads to a feeling of, "Hey, they're relatives of the Old West, and then they can write books that are like, look how good we were to them. Look, it's not that big of a deal. They're not here anymore," whereas we're still here and we have these issues. We have the Reign of Terror that happened and these things aren't covered, just like the Japanese internment camps aren't covered. I think our education system is very happy to leave anything that's negative in our country's history out or touch it for a page or two in a book so that we can have this sense of nationalistic pride and not really question it.

Paige:

Yeah, I would agree with that because I feel like what I personally learned about Native American history was basically Thanksgiving, that was it, and it was a Kumbaya thing. And then you kind of learn more about us coming here and I'm like, "Oh, maybe it was not that. Most definitely."

Joel:

Maybe seven years ago now, there was a textbook up in Canada that got recalled because widespread outrage because it said something to the effect of, "The settlers and the Indians came to an agreement for them to move west," and it's like, "I don't know if that's true."

Paige:

Oh my gosh.

Joel:

So yeah, they recalled that book.

David:

Joel, what's your personal history? I mean you grew up, and how do you stay in touch? You mentioned that you spoke to Chief Gray recently. How do you stay in touch with the nation, become part of the nation, if you don't mind just asking?

Joel:

Yeah, no, I don't mind at all. So originally I'm from Nashville, Tennessee, that's where I was born. My dad worked for Vandy, and he's who my ancestry's from, so that's where I'm from originally. We moved up here when I was five years old, and then I became enrolled after my brother was born. We got enrolled at the same time in 2004. But then to keep in touch is my dad has always gotten the Osage newspaper, and so he's told us about stuff from that. I'm getting that now and it's like a once a month thing. I'm just going over different events that are going on and different things that are important to know.

Chief Gray and I got connected before I wrote my piece that went viral, which was very crazy, very cool, or I met his daughter and she connected me with him. And I was working for AMC Theaters at the time, and they wanted to do a post for Indigenous People's Day that brought in the history of the Osage and the Reign of Terror to educate the employees. And so I worked with them on that, and to do that, I asked for Chief Gray's opinion on a few different things. It's very cool being connected with him for sure.

But then just the tribe in general, I've been doing a lot more ancestry research to try to find out what clan my family used to belong to, because to be named as an Osage, which you can see in the film when Molly and Ernest's kids were born, there were those naming scenes. So to be named, you have to find out what clan you're a part of. And so doing that has been a long process that I'm still undertaking, but that's allowed me to connect to the language department, the cultural center, the museum. And so through those connections, I'm staying connected.

And then also I'm taking language classes through our language department, which are available for Osage and non-Osage online. My language teacher, he's in the film's credits as a language consultant, which was really cool to see.

Paige:

Oh, that's awesome.

Joel:

Yeah. So the nation is putting a lot of effort and money into these cultural things, whether it be food, videos on how to make food, traditional Osage food, or language and naming practices and all this stuff. It's a lot easier to be connected than it used to be for sure.

Paige:

Was the nation kind of aware of the movie when it was being filmed and they knew there was going to be a story?

Joel:

Yeah, yeah, they filmed it in Pawhuska, which is where all the Osage Nation buildings are, the government buildings. And to the Scorsese and the team's credit, they involved the tribe very heavily in the making of the movie. Our language teachers taught the actors how to speak Osage for their lines.

Paige:

Oh, wow.

Joel:

Yeah, because we had ... Like I said, when Chief Gray was in office, they enacted the language department, and so they had been in the practice for teaching language for probably about 17 years

when they got approached. They were instrumental in that. We had people in I want to say pretty much every department, costuming, so on, so forth. Originally the story was going to be from the FBI perspective, how they came in and helped us out, saved the day. But then through meetings and through discussions with tribal figures like Chief Gray, like Chief Standing Bear, they were told, "Hey, this isn't the actual story. This isn't good enough if you want to tell this story." And Scorsese brought the tribe in to the production and listened, and that is how we got the movie that we have today.

Paige:

Oh, wow. So they definitely did have some influence kind of on the direction the movie went?

Joel:

Yeah, yeah, from the story itself through production. When you look at the film, this is something that Chief Gray told me back in October when we first spoke about it, he said he's never seen a film immerse itself in a culture like it has with ours. Housing decorations, table settings, the way they wear their clothing, everything is authentic. And the cultural center, when I was trying to find ancestry and naming and all that back in 2021 is when I first started, anytime I called and I was like, "Hey, I just wanted to check in on this," they'd be like, "We're getting to it. We just have to make moccasins for this scene." It's like, "Oh, okay. You guys are working on the movie." So that kind of helped my fears and my anxieties about the film quiet, just knowing that there was so much tribal involvement.

Paige:

Yeah. When it comes to Hollywood, do you feel like most of the stories told about Native Americans are not exactly told in the right lens in general?

Joel:

I think that we're in a very interesting place with that right now because you have something like Woman Walks Ahead from 824 that came out I want to say 2015/2016, so pretty recently. Let me double check that date for you. Yeah, 2017. That's very much told from a white perspective. But then you also have stuff like Prey that came out in 2022 that I thought was fantastic, and that they released a Comanche language cut of, it's the first movie to have a cut in an indigenous language, which is really cool. Or an audio track in indigenous language I guess.

Yeah, so I think we're in a really interesting spot where we're still getting those narratives, but we're also starting to get ones that are told in the right way. With that, I think that it's a lot easier for a white person to tell an indigenous story than it is for an indigenous person to tell one. Obviously, Scorsese's a huge name and that allyship is necessary, like Lily Gladstone said. But she also has a movie called Fancy Dance that she's in that's directed by Erika Tremblay who is Seneca-Cayuga, and it played Sundance last year and has not been picked up. It's a very good movie. I saw it via a screener. I loved it. I actually posted my review of it on Twitter and Lily Gladstone saw it and liked it, which was very cool. I saw the notification, almost threw up.

Like I said, I think we're making progress, but I don't think that they're quite ready to embrace this like they should be.

Paige:

Yeah. I did see an interview with Lily Gladstone, it popped up on my Instagram feed or whatever. And I mean, just as a person who isn't Native American at all, I think there's kind of a tendency to mesh all the

tribes together, to be honest and not really see the individual groups of Native Americans and their differences. And I think she really spoke to that, like she's not Osage and so she still had so much to learn when it came to the film. And I really enjoyed her kind of explaining that.

Joel:

Yeah, for sure. I mean, we're independent nations. Just like if you go to Europe, Latvia and France are very much not the same. We have unique languages, we have unique customs, we have unique cultures. An effect of colonialism is just to paint us all with the same brush, whereas like you said, she's not Osage so she had a lot to learn about our culture, even though she may be super connected with hers. And it's phenomenal that she not only did that for the film, but also is still involved with the tribe. She went back to the Maria Tall Chief event that the tribe put on for Maria's Quarter back late last year, and she didn't have to do that, and she did, and she was a speaker, and it's really cool to see her still involved.

David:

How many Native American nations are there Joel?

Joel:

Federally recognized, the number is about 570.

David:

Wow. Wow.

Joel:

And there are others that aren't recognized. There's a book called Project 562, the author Matika Wilbur. Free shout-out, it's a great book, I don't mind. What she did is she sold everything in her apartment and she went out with this insane goal to photograph Native Americans as we are today, somebody from every single tribe. Hence the name Project 563, there were 563 federally recognized tribes at the time. She undertook this, I believe the subtitle of the book is Changing the Way We See Native America. And so what she did is she went around and took pictures, whether it be sacred dance gear, whether it be just however they wanted to be photographed is how she photographed them. And so it's an effort to take us out of the 1800s that the history books want to keep us in and show us as we are today. And it's a really cool thing.

David:

Wow. It's got to be enormous book, huh?

Joel:

Yeah, it's heavy for sure.

Paige:

Is it kind of like a coffee table book? I feel like that'd be very cool. Joel:

Yeah, it's probably about 10 inches by 10 inches. I'm really bad with measurements, my mom will tell you that, so don't take my word for that. Maybe nine by nine. It's not small. And yeah, it's thick and it has pictures of all these people with a write-up of who they are, and there are people, there are comedy troops, etc. It's a really cool thing.

David:

Oh, that's so cool. What's her name again? Sorry Joel.

Joel:

Matika Wilbur.

David:

Have you ever gone to the Library of Congress? They have all those ... If you haven't, it's worth going to the National Archives. It's all online, the Library of Congress, but there's all these photographs of these Native American chiefs that were taken at the time, and they're all dressed in their Native American clothing. But they look to me, maybe I'm just projecting, but to me, they look really sad. You know what I mean? Because it's like they're sort of being memorialized. But anyway, take a look if you could.

They're easy to find and you can even buy them. But they're all property of the United States government. They commissioned someone to go out there or a group of people to do it, but they're very moving actually in a way. The chiefs are dressed ceremoniously and dressed powerfully, but you know what happened and it gives me kind of a queasy feeling looking at them. But anyway, take a look at them.

Joel:

I'll definitely look into that for sure.

Paige:

When it comes to Native American rights today and what they look like, I feel like there's a lot more, I mean I'm not saying it's done well by any means, but there is definitely a lot more conversation about black rights and black history than there used to be, and a lot more debate about that, honestly, than there used to be. But I always have wondered, I feel like the public still does not take in the history of Native Americans or just sort of the issues that are going on for Native Americans in America today. And I was wondering if you could just touch on that and also why maybe you think it still isn't really discussed in the media or publicly the way I believe it should be.

Joel:

You're definitely right. I remember I was working at Target and I was working in the tech department, so we have all the TVs on the back wall, and the diversity initiatives were going on. It's like the black-owned business, the Asian-owned business, the LGBT-owned business, the etc., etc., and there's no indigenous anywhere. And I've found that we frequently get left out of those things like you were saying, Paige. So yeah, our issues aren't widely known. Murder is the third leading cause of death for Native women today as it stands in 2024. I think the stat is over 80% of Native women will experience violence in their lifetime. We have these things that are affecting us that nobody knows about because we're not included in these initiatives that serve to educate.

And I think a big reason for that is like I was saying, the nationalistic feeling that this country wants us all to have, which I mean, yeah, it makes sense, every country wants its citizens to be proud of it. But I think to acknowledge Native history and acknowledge the effects of colonialism from the 1700s, or from the 1400s, through today is to hold up a mirror that nobody wants to look into. You would have to acknowledge all of these atrocities that were inflicted on these people that just wanted to live in their homes and just wanted to be stewards of their land.

And I hear people say, "Oh, well, they were at war with each other before we came, so how is that any different? And intertribal conflicts and genocide are very different. And so yeah, that's my theory is that these issues aren't talked about and our history isn't talked about because it's a very, very dark thing that nobody wants to acknowledge. And to acknowledge. It means taking steps to fix it, and they don't want to do that either.

Paige:

Yeah, I remember, because I feel like the first issues I was reading about Native American women was my first exposure to some of the issues, and I mean, I don't know if this happens in the Osage tribal area, but just the amount of rape and murder of women and people going onto reservations specifically to rape and murder, and how unsolved they go, how many of these cases never get solved.

Joel:

Yeah, you're right. Yeah, it's a widespread issue. It's not limited to just a nation. So I pulled up some stats if you guys would like to hear them?

David:

Yeah.

Paige:

I would love to hear them.

Joel:

So this is from Nativewomenswilderness.org. Indigenous women, that also includes girls, two-spirit people, etc., are murdered 10 times higher than all other ethnicities. Murder is the third leading cause of death for indigenous women, that's per the CDC. More than four out of five women, 84.3%, have experienced violence, that's via the National Institute of Justice. More than half of indigenous women experience sexual violence in their lifetimes. More than half have been abused by their intimate partners. 48.8% have been stalked. Indigenous women are 1.7 times more likely to experience violence, two times more likely to be raped, and the murder rate of indigenous women is three times higher than white women.

Paige:

It's honestly crazy when you hear the statistics of it. And I was just wondering if you could touch specifically to the Osage because there's a lot of I think misconceptions. I honestly don't even know about the way policing works on tribal land and in reservations. Could you kind of touch on how it does work? Is it always just goes directly to the FBI or specifically on the tribal land?

Joel:

Yeah, so part of our sovereignty as independent sovereign nations that exist within this country is that the state police do not have jurisdiction on our land. Tribes have their own police departments. If you've seen Reservation Dogs, you've seen that with the cop character who's hilarious. But yeah, so highly recommend the show. It's fun. So our tribal government polices and can impose sentences and that kind of stuff. If requested, then we can go and have federal involvement. But yeah, if a state trooper comes on to federal Indian land, they can't do anything. Going with that, there is another stat. By 2016, there were over 5,700 reports of missing indigenous women and girls, the U.S. Department of Justice missing Persons database had reported 116 of them.

Paige:

Do you see in the future, because I feel like today there's a lot more just in terms of public office like Congress and Senate, there's a lot more diversity, not amazing, but there's a lot more black people serving, there's a lot more Asian people serving, is there a reason do you think that Native Americans choose not to get involved with kind of U.S. government? I know there's been a few I know, but it's much less frequent.

Joel:

I don't know if it's a choice not to so much as it is the lack of opportunity. Right now, Deb Haaland is the first Native American to serve in Congress I believe, and she has enacted Missing & Murdered unit to pursue these cases that get so under-reported. The stat that I gave, that's 2% of the cases had actually been reported, so she's done that. She also has a boarding school initiative, to look into those, and part of that is to find graves of children that we don't know about, which is heavy. And so, yeah, I don't think it's necessarily a nobody wants to do it as it is a nobody wants us to do it.

Paige:

Yeah, that makes sense. I think the main reason I phrased it that way is just because I mean, obviously I'm not Native American, but I would probably feel very mistrusting of the government's ability and not necessarily want to get involved.

Joel:

Oh, yeah, for sure.

Paige:

Just because of the history. But I did know that she was the first person. I remember reading it in some article. And I mean, I was excited to see that.

Joel:

Yeah, for sure. And then springboarding off of that, kind of bringing a couple of things together. Last year, Fancy Dance played, which touches heavily on missing and murdered indigenous women, and also the Indian Child Welfare Act, which got challenged, thankfully not overturned. This year at Sundance, there's a documentary called Sugar Cane playing that's an investigation into abuse and missing children at a residential school at the nearby Sugar Cane Reserve, and that is actually available online, so if you pay $25 for a ticket, you'll be able to watch that I believe. I have my ticket. I'm definitely watching it.

Paige:

I do love Sundance.

Joel:

Yeah, Sundance is a really unique institution in that Robert Redford, when he founded it, indigenous storytelling was a key part of his vision. And so there's a program for indigenous filmmakers, and they usually have a very solid offering of stuff that's told by indigenous filmmakers as well.

David:

Wow.

Paige:

Yeah, because I saw, what was it called, oh, I saw Wind River, which I mean I liked that it touched on kind of a lot of the issues that were ... I don't, did you see Wind River?

Joel:

I haven't, no.

Paige:

But I also was like, "Oh, it's definitely one of these very cliche white savior sort of stories," but I do like that it brought awareness to the issues that were happening for a lot of women and tribes. But I remember because I saw it with my best friend, and we left and we were like ... What were you going to ask, dad? Sorry.

David:

Oh, I was going to ask about the boarding schools. I don't know that story, Joel.

Joel:

Oh, yeah. So when this was like, I mean these were still happening in the 20th century, but they're a very old thing. There was actually an episode of Reservation Dogs that touched on it. It's called The Deer Lady. Very, very good episode, heavy episode be warned going in, but very good one.

Essentially what happened is the government and the Catholic Church actually worked together to essentially forcefully assimilate native children into white culture. One of the very important people in the boarding school founding, I suppose, there was a quote attributed to him that says, "Kill the Indian in him and save the man." That's the kind of thing that they were working with, and so they would literally steal children off of reservations and take them to these schools, which is an internationally recognized form of genocide by the way. They would cut their hair and steal their languages from them. They would abuse them, kill them. There have been graves found at different boarding schools now in both the U.S. and Canada, and I would venture to say that that's what Sugar Cane is about.

So severing them from their culture, forcing them to assimilate into white culture, which is why there are tribes' languages that are extinct, which is why my tribe's language almost went extinct because we were forbidden from speaking it for so long. Especially in these boarding schools, it was forbidden to speak your tribe's language. You had to learn English, you had to speak English. And you can look up just like boarding school children, Indian boarding school children before and after, and it is a stark and haunting difference.

Paige:

Wow. I could be wrong, but I remember reading that a grave was discovered recently in Canada because I remember really reading about First Nations peoples' graves being discovered in Canada. But I also remember learning that a lot of, and I could be wrong, maybe you don't even know about this, but Native Americans were some of the really good football players, they made them play football. Did you ever read about this? But they were very good, and they beat either the Marines or the Armies in a football game?

Joel:

Yeah. There's I want to say the Carlisle Boarding School, which is where a lot of kids got sent. That was another thing is oftentimes, they weren't sent to a boarding school that was nearby to their reservation so they could go home like how we think of boarding schools now when you're there Monday to Friday and you go home for the weekend. They were taken and sent across the country to fully sever that connection. So let me just double check, make sure that it was the Carlisle School.

Yeah, so yeah, the Carlisle football team, a bunch of guys. Jim Thorpe-

David:

Oh, wow.

Joel:

-Is probably the most widely known name. He was on that Carlisle Indian team, along with obviously a bunch of others. But yeah, they beat the Army team 27-6 when they played. And then obviously Jim Thorpe had a very successful professional career. There was actually also, this is not as well known, but there was a team called the Hominy Indians that was made up of actually a lot of Osage. It was founded by Osage, but there were also people from nearby tribes, and so they had a team, and then they would go around the country and play, and they played the New York Giants in Oklahoma after they had won the Super Bowl, and they beat them. Yeah, it was December 26th, 1927, they defeated the New York Giants 13-6.

Paige:

That's awesome. That's pretty cool.

Joel:

Yeah. There's a documentary about it that's really hard to find. The creator of that documentary is trying to turn it into a full length movie.

David:

What do you see personally for your future? I mean you've done this phenomenal article that as you say, it just went viral. Paige told me about it. She said, "You got to read this article."

Joel:

How did you come across it? Paige:

I think, honestly, I saw it on Twitter. I really did. I was going through Twitter and I saw this article, and I had been interested after seeing the movie because all of a sudden so many people were just talking about the Osage Tribe, and I didn't know the way the filming direction of it went. Truthfully, the main reason, I mean, it sounds so bad, but it's a very long movie, but one of my favorite singers is in the movie, Jason Isbell, so I was like, "I have to see this movie."

Joel:

He was so good.

David:

He what?

Paige:

He was great.

Joel:

Yeah. A bunch of people that I know were like, "I didn't know he was a singer. I thought he was an actor." I was like, "No, that dude is a singer."

Paige:

And he's a phenomenal singer.

Joel:

Yeah, yeah. The guy that played Blacky Thompson, that was his first ever acting role.

Paige:

Oh, wow.

Joel:

Yeah. You have a mix of experienced actors like Lily Gladstone, like De Niro, like DiCaprio, and you also have people that are in their first roles or sing. Like Sturgill Simpson's also in the movie. Jack White's in the movie for a little bit at the end. Yeah, it's a really interesting mix.

Paige:

No, I happened across the article and I thought it was really well written, and I liked how you talked about how people should see the movie. It's not the story you guys would tell, but it should still be watched. And I feel like you were really good at explaining what was done well and what was not done as well.

Joel:

Thank you, yeah.

Paige:

And broke it down really well.

Joel:

I'm still overwhelmed, honestly, that it has a million impressions on Twitter or more. You and a million of our closest friends saw that, which it's been nuts, but yeah, I'm grateful that people want to know more, that want to hear a perspective from an Osage. I think that's really cool. The comments on Twitter at least have been very positive. I went on Facebook the other day and dug through that comment section. That was interesting. There were a lot of comments that were like, "The Osage we're involved. Who are you to say that this isn't the story they would tell?" It's like, "Hey, if you click on the article, line one, I've always been proud to be Osage."

Paige:

People are so ridiculous on social media.

Joel:

Yeah.

David:

What's next in your future Joel?

Joel:

Oh, my future? Yeah, so yeah, I'm a freelance writer for Slate right now, so just kind of waiting for an assignment essentially. I've also been brought onto a project that I can't talk a lot about right now in very early stages, but I've been asked to join a creative team for I think I can say a documentary series. So that's really exciting. I'm excited to learn some behind the scenes stuff with that.

Other than that, I've been thinking about moving to the reservation in the next couple years. I've never been able to fully have a connection with the tribe, with the people, with the culture, and that's something that I want both for myself and if I have any kids, I want them to grow up having a very strong sense of who they are and how cool it is to be Osage.

David:

Listen, that's right on the top there. That's a great way to end it though. That's such a ... What, really, thank you so much for sharing your time.

Paige:

Yeah, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Joel:

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Paige:

Thank you for listening to Disarming Data, and thank you to Eric Montgomery for producing this podcast. To support the podcast, please rate, review, and follow on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. If you'd like to learn more about the current state of data security, head on over to our website, disarmingdata.com.