I’ve just read “Killers of the Flower Moon” by David Grann, about the systematic murder of probably hundreds of people and the disenfranchisement and terrorizing of many more as greed and prejudice fueled an ugly response to the phenomenal riches of Osage Indians in Oklahoma a century ago.
The Osage happened to find themselves the beneficiaries of an enormous oil discovery on their reservation. Tribal members soon became some of the wealthiest people on earth. Naturally, this stimulated all sorts of schemes to defraud the Osage of their affluence by those, including members of Congress, whose personal values were not equal to resisting the tremendous temptation.
The lesson I find most noteworthy about that brutal chapter of American history is that it is virtually unknown in our culture. And by “unknown” I mean, most devastatingly, “unlearned from.” This is not surprising, since virtually all the chapters of untold viciousness we Americans have visited upon ourselves and others are significantly “unlearned from”—perhaps most notably, or egregiously, the lives of black people, native people, and women. Oh, there are many others, to be sure, but those are undoubtedly among the more conspicuous.
