I went into this expecting the corruption, murder, institutional racism, etc. against the Osage Indians to be very bad, and I still somehow managed to come out of this book mindboggled. This book should be taught in schools, and it is heinous that these terrible things happened, and just as heinous that so many people covered it up, and practically erased it from history.
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the US were the Osage. By sheer coincidence, after their tribe was displaced from their ancestral lands, they chose new, rocky, inhospitable lands that they believed white people would not want. Years later, vast deposits of oil were discovered, an “underground reservation”, running all throughout, and due to a clause they managed to slip by white people when they first took possession, the tribe had all rights to minerals and resources mined from the earth in perpetuity. Those rights could not be sold, only inherited. They were called headrights, and they made every member of the Osage extremely wealthy. This, of course, did not sit well with white people.
Basically, the attitude of most white people as portrayed here (and in the entire history of the US) was, “Fuck you, Indians, I want that.” Actually, a lot of history can be explained that way. One person/group saying to another, “Fuck you, ______, I want that.” In this case, even despite their enormous wealth, the balance of power was not in favor of the Osage, and bad things started happening. These bad things are too complex and insidious for me to sum up in the space of this review, and the murders named in the title are just the tip of it.
David Grann researched this book for years, digging into archives and interviewing people, basically unearthing this story (which was HUGE nationwide news at the time) from the bowels of history, where all but the Osage had forgotten about it. Despite widespread corruption, the nascent FBI did manage to solve the most publicized murders, but Grann takes it a bit further, implying that there were many, many more murders, and an unspoken conspiracy of graft and fraud built into the systems that supposedly “guarded” the Osage.
I can’t emphasize enough that everybody should read this, especially everyone who lives in the US.
[4.5 stars]
Read Harder Challenge 2019: A book by a journalist or about journalism.
Agreed on all fronts! I read it cold, with no expectations, and was absolutely horrified but yet not surprised at all.
Same! I was shocked and yet not surprised, either. Humans can be terrible but we keep hoping we’re not anyway, over and over.
This is another one on my list.
I don’t know if I’m doing the Read Harder Challenge this year, some of the categories seem excessively obscure, but I suppose that’s the point, to make you dig a little deeper to find something for the category but something with less than 100 reviews on Goodreads? How can I find out if an author considers themselves nuerodiverse? I am doing the Read Women challenge for sure this year though.
I’m using The Bridal Test for the neurodiverse challenge. If the author is on the spectrum, they are considered neurodiverse. People with ADHD, dyslexia and Tourettes would also count. Goodreads has Read Harder groups where people offer suggestions, and I found out today, so does my library! I’ve got all but three categories filled that way.
I actually only had two out of seventeen books on my TBR that had under 100 reviews. I ended up going with this one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0731BQPBB/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
One of my GR friends read it and gave it five stars, so we’ll see!