Killers of the Flower Moon
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I watched this film over the weekend, which depicts a textbook case of genocide and how it happens. As a piece of microhistory, it relates the reign of terror of Osage native Americans. They had the good fortune to have oil discovered under their reservation, and became individually wealthy.
The first step was to prohibit them controlling their own wealth: the US government declared them incompetent to manage their own affairs, and so they had to have white guardians looking after their money, which became a licence for corruption. They simply couldn’t be allowed to control and invest that sort of wealth and become independent rivals.
They were also prevented from selling their stakes, the ‘head rights’ were inalienable, so the only route to obtaining them was through marriage, and after that, murder.
It’s a fascinating mix of private action and interest, backed up by institutional corruption. The guilty men protected each other and made up positions of power and authority in the area.
reading the book the film is based on was also interesting, because it became a battle between technocratic America (in the form of the newly constructed FBI) and the informal cleptocracy of the wild west. Indeed, the recent Trump experiment was a continuation of such a battle, the spoils system of the big man who could turn the state machine to his advantage was very much what he was trying to turn the national government into: much like William hale, the King of the Osage Hills.
I saw this film at the weekend and would recommend it to anyone who likes a good film. Being directed by Martin Scorcese, it was a bit like a gangster film but the gangsters here are white Texans not Italian mafiosi. The musical score was outstanding as with all Scorcese’s films as was the acting even though Leo De Caprio was a bit miscast due to his age (but not his acting). De Niro was De Niro at his best – jovial and likeable but underneath the veneer a sinister psychopath (the capitalist class personified). Lily Gladstone was outstanding as the Native American who understood the inevitability of white supremacy. I particularly liked that Native Americans had agency in this story and weren’t cast as helpless victims. I would recommend this film – due to the acting, score, story, political context – all excellent, as long as you have 3 and a half hours to spare, which I was privileged to have.
1) https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/francis-jennings/302478/ Francis Jennings books on the American natives show a different world to the one propagated against them by the white men, as they called them: doubled tongues, because they always betrayed them, they signed more than 250 accords and treaties and all were violated, except one as the Apaches said: They promised that they were going to take our lands, and they did it
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2) The Sicilian mafiosos are altar boys compared with the Texans and US gangsters who run the corporations and the government, the Sicilians had certain loyalty and code of honors among them, and the Sicilian mafia developed itself without the intervention and collaboration of the state, presidents, senators, and courts, there are several US politicians connected with the Russian mafia which can give lectures to the mexican and colombian mafias. There was not any empire able to defeat the Mapuches,( Araucanos ) but the lawyers and politicians were able to do that, they took everything from them—————————————————————————————————–
3) I am glad that you brought this historical passage to this forum because we never talk about the Indians ( they call themselves the peoples of the earth, and the Indians are from India ) That event has been known for many years, and it was widely discussed on the Latin Americas Yahoo groups forums, ,and most historians have not paid attention to it, and the historian Francis Jennings has written several books about the American natives ( besides Lewis Morgan, and Juan Bosh ) and he called them: The founders of the Americas, and his books show that they were living in a very advanced civilization, with high family values, friendship, brotherhood, respect for the earth, the forests, and the animals. His religion was the natural world
Francis Jennings books should be used as textbooks in the USA educational system, but nobody wants to face the real truth, specially his book titled: Invasion which debunks the so called independence of the USA, and that christians arrived to bring civilization, and his recollection destroys the idea that they were savages, and that it was an empty land given by god to the europeans, and that they spoke the language of the devil, but the language of the Apache was used as military code during the war with Japan, and many of them were forced to become soldiers
This particular tribe they had petroleum and mineral in their land and most of them were killed, they were going to become part of the USA capitalist class because they were going to accumulate billions of dollars in profits, they had mansions, they wore expensive clothes, they had servants, and their children were sent to expensive schools, they were not the only ones, there was another group of Indians who had uranium, silver and golds in their territory and they were kicked out.
Someone who is part of the USA capitalist class put that wealth in their pockets, and they are the actual owners of all those petroleum and mineral companies, as they have done in Latin America, specially Canadian mining companies, and now Chinese and Russian capitalists are competing each others, and some of them are the darling of the left
I was a member of several farum of Indians in yahoo groups, and I learned many things from them, as well I was able to publish articles written by the SPGB and the WSM, I learned from them that the Tainos were not completely extinguished as the historian are saying, there are Tainos in Canada which means that they travelled from the North toward the Caribbean islands. ( Ciboney or Siboney and Caribe )
They were owner of several continents and now they are living as renters, that was a real genocide, and real holocaust when more than 75 millions were killed, Howard Zinn indicated wrote about 70 millions and Juan Bosh wrote about 100 millions, it was a big original accumulation of wealth for small group of human beings that made that fortune creating a big cemetery. As it was said here in this forum, capitalism did not arrive peaceful, it was violently established, and millions of peoples love it, we must be masochists
—The USA educational system is not going to use this book as a school textbook, but in other countries outside the US this type of critical book is used to teach history to the students
The link doesn’t seem to go anywhere, can you give us the author/title in plain text?
While I’m here, I’m flicking in and out of: “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States / Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz” which gives some interesting and much needed refocussing on the events of the growth of America.
Young Master Smeet
Moderator
The link doesn’t seem to go anywhere, can you give us the author/title in plain text?The Invasion of America
Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of ConquestBy Francis Jennings
The Invasion of America
392 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 7 illus., 4 maps, appends., notes, bibl., index
PAPERBACK ISBN: 978-0-8078-7144-7
Published: February 2010
Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina PressBUY THIS BOOK
PAPERBACK $37.50
To purchase online via an independent bookstore, visit Bookshop.org
Omohundro Institute Website
Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press
In this iconoclastic book, Francis Jennings recasts the story of American colonization as a territorial invasion. The traditional history of early America paints the colonies as a transplantation of European culture to a new continent–a “virgin land” in which Native Americans were assigned the role of foil whose main contribution was to stimulate the energy and ingenuity of European dispossessors. Jennings rejects this ideology and examines the relationships between Europeans and Indians from a far more critical point of view. Shorn of old mythology and rationalizations, Puritan actions are seen in the cold light of material interest and naked expansion.
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There is also a good review made by the SLP of America. They do not have a good search engine on their website—————————————————-
The book written by Ortiz is a good research. Too bad that Juan Bosh book has not been published in English
http://biblioteca.diputados.gob.mx/janium/bv/ce/scpd/LX/cris_colon.pdf
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This doctorate thesis mention the works of Jennings and the accumulation of capital
https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/33949/PDF/1/play/That SLP review mentioned by Almamater of the Jennings book is on (newspaper) page 2 here, just under ‘at large’:
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