Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese's new film, is an adaptation of Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, a 2017 nonfiction book by American journalist and writer David Grann. Both shed light on the tragic fate of the Osage people, forced in the 19th century to settle in Oklahoma, in the United States's Great Plains. The discovery of oil on their lands in 1894 made them rich, but between 1918 and 1931 they were struck by a series of massacres as mysterious as they were barbaric.
Grann is full of praise for Geoffrey Standing Bear, elected as principal chief in 2014 to lead this community of 25,000 people. "Standing Bear is a leader like few others – wise, courageous, kind," David Grann told Le Monde. "He has a strong sense of history and a great vision for his people." These were just some of the qualities displayed by Standing Bear, a former lawyer, impeccably dressed in a suit and tie, during the online interview he gave Le Monde.
My name is Geoffrey – spelled like it is in France and England – Standing Bear. Of the Bear clan. I am the elected principal chief of the Osage Nation. A little over 10 years ago, I was an attorney in the small town of Pawhuska – which is our tribal capital – where I still reside with my wife, and we have four children, eight grandchildren. I'm a product of the Roman Catholic school system, high school and grade school, and that is a direct result of the missionary work of the Jesuit order of the Catholic Church among the Osage.
We are an oral history-based people – as are most Indigenous people – and so for a time period, so recent in our oral histories, it is very vivid. We have kept these discussions for the most part among ourselves. Some Osage have written books that never received much circulation. The Deaths of Sybil Bolton is one written by an Osage [Dennis McAuliffe Jr., whose grandmother was Osage] about that time period. Another is A Pipe for February, written by an Osage [Charles Red Corn, of the Peace clan of the Osage] about that time period. The story in the book by David Grann and made now into this movie talks about a time that was not talked about very often because it's very depressing. It was just horrible.
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