Right before the pandemic, we visited our family for the holidays in Oklahoma, and we took a day trip to the town of Pawhuska in Osage County.
This is a town that is best-known, up until now, as the home of TV’s Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond or the backdrop of the play and movie August: Osage County.
Recommended Videos
On our way there, as we watched the pumping oil wells whizzing by the car, my mother-in-law told us she saw on the news that Robert DeNiro, Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese had been in town filming a movie about “what happened to the Osage people.”
“What happened to the Osage people?” I asked.
I found out the movie they were filming was based on a book by David Grann, so I picked up a copy.
The Osage Nation had been forced out of their home by white settlers and relocated to this flat, rocky section of Oklahoma. What those white settlers did not know was under this rock was a lot of oil.
That oil made the Osage very, very rich, and the only way the white settlers could get their hands on it was the marry into the Osage Nation.
That resulted in one of the most horrific series of murders for money in our nation’s history.
In fact, the investigation into those murders birthed what is now known as the FBI.
See the movie, but also read the book. This is history that cannot be ignored.
Check out every episode of Riff On This in the media player below:
