Inside the real life tragedy behind 'Killers of the Flower Moon' | Nightline

[Music] I knew um from very early age when my parents and Aunt they would tell the story they would say okay so and so has been murdered over here and this is what happened to this family and this family did this and so always knew Margie burkhard finds peace and strength during her visits to greyhorse cemetery in Northern Oklahoma it's the final resting place for several o family members including her grandmother Molly notably missing here Ernest burkart her grandfather for nearly a century the story of Molly and Ernest burkart and the deaths that surrounded her family was buried deep beneath the hollowed tribal land of the oage people a love story which ended in a murderous plot that love story one of the arcs of David Grant's best-selling book killers of the flower Moon one that inspired a movie of the same name directed by Martin Scorsese which shines a light on the rain of terror that struck the oage tribe in the early 20th century Leonardo Dicaprio and Lily Gladstone play Margie's grandparents native film star Gladstone learned to speak oage during her role show that's how you are I don't know what you said but it must have been Indian for handsome devil I want to make sure the story is told accurately that was a concern that there would be some Distortion to the facts her home and the surrounding area transformed as scorsese's team worked with locals to bring their Rich culture to the big screen in the late 1800s the OS were forced off their lands by white settlers and ending up in what is now Northern Oklahoma at the time the land was Rocky undeveloped and undesirable but around 1920 oil was found on the reservation a lot of oil this became the oil capital of the world almost overnight Osage families like Margie became Rich some of the wealthiest people in the world including the great-grandfather of James Gray a former oage Chief it was making national news how much wealth they were generating and what they were doing with it killers of the flower Moon focuses on the mysterious deaths of several of those affluent Osage Indians both James and Margie's families were targeted by the violence you mentioned your great-grandfather mhm was also a victim so you have a personal connection to this it couldn't be more personal yeah once it became abundantly clear that nobody was investigating all the mysterious deaths that were going on they appealed to the tribal council to petition the United States to do something about it eventually Federal investigators stepped in and uncovered a larger conspiracy among non-native locals to take advantage of the Osage families and usurp their fortunes we weren't supposed to be wealthy and something had to be done about it all of this enabled by an oppressive policy imposed on the newly Rich OS half blood or more were automatically declared non-competent incapable of conducting Business Without a white Guardian approving any Transaction what did that do to the tribe well it put the fox in charge of the hen house is what it did and so the guardian program created an economic incentive that if this individual were to die you could marry into this family and inherit their wealth hence the reign of terror exactly gray was chief of the oage nation from 2002 to 200 10 his focus in part was to honor the trib's tumultuous past by revitalizing the tribe's focus on the future well we had to get the internal house in order in order for us to establish the kind of reforms that I knew the the nation and the people of the OS Nation wanted part of Gray's plan included buying back land that was originally part of the Osage Nation and reinvesting in their communities and culture we opened seven casinos and we poured all of that money into education Higher Education Health Care cultural preservation language preservation when word got out the movie rights had been sold gray was committed to making sure the real story of the OS people wasn't whitewashed when scorsi decided to accept our invitation and come to meet with the greyhorse residents in the Osage Nation I think was unexpected we fed him we sat down we visited did scors ay listen yeah he did he jumped out of his chair and he shook my hand he thanked me and he said he was going to take some time to work on the script right then and there when this money start coming we should have known it came with something else well there was some concerns with some of the community members okay that they thought this was a Scorsese film and it was going to be gory and like a shoot them up film Margie was also consulted by the legendary filmmaker he said he would um be sensitive you also had a sit down conversation with Leonardo DiCaprio please tell me you got excited for that oh maybe a little okay what was that conversation like for you he was real he was real respectful he had some questions on on uh Molly and arnest relationship you know Molly she loved her husband and she wanted to believe him he was like well how how could you love somebody and do this to them Ernest burkhard Margie's grandfather pled guilty to Murder One member of a much broader conspiracy masterminded by Dao's character it just looks like murder it's not supposed to be that way that killed an estimated 60 oage by explosion poison and gunshots in order to get their hands on the oil money more than a 100 years after the reign of terror Margie continues to wrestle with her families and communities complicated history was there ever a point where you said there's a lot of there's a lot of baggage here right it happened it happened to my family you can't run away from anything like that um you just have to own it I guess both Margie and gray were invited to advance screening after Decades of struggling with how their people have been portrayed both agree their culture has finally come into clearer Focus did the movie get it right back in the old days they would miss the Indian point of view in a movie by a mile right now they're missing it by feet the industry is moving closer to allowing indigenous people to tell their stories and I think Scorsese has really set a new bar I saw the movie twice was it hard to watch the the first time it was it was pretty emotional I mean just because um you know you see your grandmother on screen and you see your grandfather on screen what is the Legacy then of the birkart name persevering for Molly and her sisters and for my my children to any oage that knows their culture to watch this film seeing it visibly pop on the screen it's enormously powerful hi everyone George Stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the ABC News YouTube channel if you'd like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our Channel and don't forget to download the ABC News app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching

Channel: ABC News

Views: 266,650

Keywords: abc, community, flower, history, killers, martin, moon, movie, news, nightline, ntl, of, oklahoma, osage, p_cmsid=2494279, p_vid=news-104191531, reign, scorcese, terror, the, tragedy

Id: Irj_zNzpCxM

Length: 8min 17sec (497 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2023