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How the Osage Nation helped Martin Scorsese make ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ more authentic

Lily Gladstone, who plays Osage woman Mollie Burkhart, and Martin Scorsese on the set of "Killers of the Flower Moon."

Lily Gladstone, who plays Osage woman Mollie Burkhart, and Martin Scorsese on the set of "Killers of the Flower Moon."

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CNN

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From the White savior narrative at the heart of “Dances With Wolves” to the Indigenous stereotypes in “The Last of the Mohicans,” Hollywood doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to portrayals of Native Americans.

So when it was announced that Martin Scorsese would be directing “Killers of the Flower Moon,” a story about the 1920s Osage murders based on David Grann’s best-selling book of the same name, plenty of Osage people were skeptical.

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“Killers of the Flower Moon” recounts a dark and painful chapter of Osage history. After the Osage were forced from their homelands and relocated to a reservation in present-day Oklahoma, they eventually discovered vast oil deposits beneath their new land. Those oil deposits made the Osage extraordinarily wealthy — and also made them the targets of a sinister murder plot.

“I was worried we were going to get exploited again — not so much in losing resources and our land, but in the telling of the story of how we lost our resources and land,” former Osage Nation Chief Jim Gray told CNN.

Before production of “Killers of the Flower Moon” began, the Osage Nation expressed their concerns and signaled that they wanted to be involved in bringing their history to the big screen. Scorsese and his team met with members of the tribe on multiple occasions, and ultimately worked with them to ensure that the depictions of Osage people and culture felt as true to life as possible.

Now that they’ve seen “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Gray and other Osages say the film is all the better for the collaboration.

Scorsese met with descendants of Osage murder victims

In 2019, Scorsese and his team met with Osage Nation Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear to discuss “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Chief Standing Bear offered up resources such as the tribe’s language department that could assist in the film’s production, the Osage News reported at the time. That same year, Scorsese met with residents of the Gray Horse community in Oklahoma. Many of the residents are descendants of Osage victims killed in the 1920s. Jim Gray was also in attendance.

Jim Gray, former chief of the Osage Nation (2002-2010). Posing at a local art gallery in Ski Atok, Oklahoma on September 28, 2023. On Osage land in northern Oklahoma, those who came before Margie Burkhart pointed out the graves of their ancestors were killed within a century. The tragedy that befell her family is the focus of Martin Scorsese's new film Killers of the Flower Moon, based on the best-selling novel of the same name. (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP) (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP, Getty Images)

Former Osage Nation Chief Jim Gray has a personal connection to the story told in "Killers of the Flower Moon."

Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images

Gray is the great-grandson of Henry Roan, the Osage man whose murder plot eventually led federal investigators to track down. In his meeting with Scorsese, Gray said he encouraged the director to look deeper into who the Osage victims were.

"Be the director who makes a movie that this industry has never seen before. They'll look at it and say, 'We were right,'" Gray told Scorsese at the time.

Mr. Gray doesn't know what effect his words ultimately had on Mr. Scorsese, he said. However, as the director said in an interview, the original script was significantly revised. Like Grann's 2017 book, the film was initially planned to focus on Special Agent Tom White and how his investigation led to the creation of the FBI, with Leonardo DiCaprio set to play White. Ta.

"At some point he realized he was making a movie about all white people," Scorsese said in an interview with Time magazine. “So I took an outside-in approach, and that worried me.”

Scorsese and DiCaprio ultimately decided to center the film on Molly and her relationship with Ernest Burkhardt, an Osage woman whose family had mysteriously died, and her white settler husband. DiCaprio was recast as Ernest Burkhardt, and Jesse Plemons was cast as the FBI agent. Killers of the Flower Moon with Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone

Scorsese ultimately revised the film's script to focus more on the relationship between Molly (Gladstone) and Ernest Burkhardt (Leonardo DiCaprio). Melinda Sue Gordon/Apple TV+

"Killers of the Flower Moon" still revolves around mostly white men, something some Osages criticize.

"As an Osage, I wanted to tell this from the perspective of what Molly and her family went through," Christopher Côté, the film's Osage language consultant, told The Hollywood Reporter at this week's Los Angeles premiere. Told. “But I think we need the Osage for that.”

Côté acknowledged that Scorsese "did a great job representing the people," but he also criticized the portrayal of Molly and Burkhardt's marriage.

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