Notes on Erasure & Killers of the Flower Moon

from a triggered place

After finally spending three and a half hours watching the film Killers of the Flower Moon (a classic Scorsese move to have his audience watch a 2+ hour film), I was triggered at the calculated effort to erase and invade the Indigenous Osage Nation.

…Plot Spoiler Alert

The film tells the story of the historical “Reign of Terror” when the Osage Nation, a displaced Indigenous tribe, lands in Oklahoma and finds oil bursting out from the ground of their reservation. The tribe eventually becomes wealthy from their oil production and supply. After coming into their new-found wealth, the U.S. government passed legislation that appointed white guardians to manage the money of tribe members. Guardian, William King Hale - played by Robert De Niro, conspired with his nephew Ernest Burkhart - played by Leonardo DiCaprio, to steal and murder many tribe members so they could acquire their wealth.

The last couple of minutes of the film depicts an old-fashioned, live radio show where a group of white actors performed the Osage’s narrative in epilogue-form. The show was dramatized and told from a witty, upbeat tone.

So many similar stories live within our densely-packed history books. And, when such stories are retold without imposing a moral responsibility, they serve as the blueprint for ethnic cleansing. And when such stories are told for mere entertainment, we remove consequences; we create space for the same ill practices to exist.

Those ill-practices not only exist, they spread like wildfire:

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Transatlantic Slavery (1788-1800) Members of European countries brought enslaved African people to the Americas. Slaves were traded and transported from Central and West Africa who were sold by West African slave traders. The model of the transatlantic slave trade was was a replica of the Arab slave trade.

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Trail of Tears (1830-1850) The tragic historical event, commonly referred to as the Trail of Tears where the U.S. government and power-hungry citizens forcibly displaced about 60,000 Indigenous people from the five better-known tribes: Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Chocotaw. The first tribe to be removed were the Chocotaw; that served as the model for the remaining tribes.

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Scramble for Africa (1883-1914) European countries strategically brought the majority if not all of the African continent under their control through military and economic power. The first African countries to become colonized were Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria. This served as a model for those individuals who conspired during the Berlin Conference.

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Wilmington, NC Massacre (1898) A mob of white rebels were frustrated with the elected biracial local government and white policemen rode into black homes threatening them with death and for attempting to vote. As a result, more than 100K registered black voters fled Wilmington. This served as a model to repeat terrorization on black neighbors that displayed any attempt to gain power- politically, socially, or economically.

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Black Wall Street Massacre (1921) A black neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma built a thriving community of businesses and was commonly referred to as the Black Wall Street. A group of white arsonists and looters burned down the neighborhood, killing about 300 and leaving about 80% of the community homeless.

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These stories were blueprints for like-minded individuals eager to gain power.

And marginalized communities have power

• through our capacity to shape and influence culture, 

• through our ability to generate profit,

• and through our sheer strength and tenacity.

In this digital era, it’s critical that we reclaim voices that were once buried and left within the margins of society’s consciousness.

Attention is the new currency.

Digital media platforms have been engineered to function as content mills. They republish content over and over and incentivize consistent publishing through reach and exposure metrics.

So, as you are publishing content, be sure to recreate and reclaim those stories that were once buried so those narratives can hop on the content mill and resurface themselves over and over again.

Pencils have two ends - the lead that creates and the rubber that erases. Keep scribbling so that the eraser cannot keep up.