The Story Behind the Osage Head Rights and the ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ : Planet Money : NPR

Richard J. Lonsinger was abandoned by his mother as a toddler at a Texas bus station along with his three siblings. A member of the Ponca tribe of Oklahoma, Lonsinger was first placed in foster care and then adopted by a white family. It wasn’t until he was in his 20s that he began to think seriously about his origins.

“When I was 21, 22, I felt so alone,” he said. “I was always wondering, you know, what am I supposed to be? Who am I supposed to be?”

To answer these questions, Lonsinger called the Ponca Tribe’s office, where he was connected to his biological family, including his biological mother and other siblings. He eventually connected with them and began to build a relationship with them. But when his biological mother died in 2010, Lonsinger was neither invited to her funeral nor included in the distribution of her estate.

After a lifetime of feeling left out by his family, he decided to take action. He asked the probate court to re-examine her estate and divide her assets equally among her eight children. One of her most valuable assets was the so-called Osage head right.

“I started asking friends, business partners, friends in Oklahoma, ‘What does it mean to own an Osage head right?'” he recalled. “And they said, ‘Well, Rick, look, this is a big deal.'”

In 2014, a probate judge ruled in favor of Richard and his siblings, who had been abandoned decades earlier, and that they would receive equal rights to their biological mother’s head, an inheritance that took Lonsinger nearly a decade to fully understand.

Osage Reign of Terror

The history of the land title system dates back to the late 19th century, when the Osage were driven off their reservation in Kansas. They eventually settled in northern Oklahoma and purchased new land with approval from the federal government.

Then, in 1887, the Dawes Act was enacted, which was intended to divide Indian land into small parcels and distribute those parcels to individuals. However, because the Osage had purchased the land outright, they were better able to resist these changes than other tribes.

In 1906, the U.S. government finally passed a decree allocating land to the Osage tribe, with two important provisions. First, the land could only be allocated to Osage tribe members. Second, regardless of who owned the land, the rights to mineral resources such as coal, gas, and oil would remain collectively owned by the tribe. The rights to oil, in particular, would become invaluable.

To distribute profits from collectively owned mineral rights, a new system was created. In 1907, each of the 2,229 Osage members on the tribal rolls received an equal share of revenues, known as “head rights.” Private companies would lease land from the tribe to extract oil, gas, gravel, or coal, then deposit a percentage of their revenues into a trust fund administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In turn, the Bureau of Indian Affairs would distribute payments from that trust fund to the head right holders.

Once oil began to be produced, the Osage became the wealthiest community per capita in the world. People received annual payments that ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars adjusted for inflation. They purchased nice clothes, big houses, and nice cars. However, word quickly spread about these suddenly wealthy people and attracted a large number of swindlers and con men to Oklahoma.

Osage guardianship was established by the U.S. government, ostensibly to help the Osage retain their wealth, by assigning non-Osage people to look after Osage members deemed “incompetent” to manage their wealth. In reality, the guardianship system was often an overtly racist institution.

“If you’re considered a full-blooded American Indian, you’re automatically considered incapable, so let’s assign you a white guardian to handle your financial affairs,” said Tara Damron, program director at the Hominy White Memorial Center in Oklahoma.

Guardians would often pay themselves from the money they were supposed to protect, and then give their Osage wards a small stipend. Many white people married Osage tribesmen, sometimes forcibly, became their guardians, and then killed them for their head rights. (David Grann’s bestselling book Killers of the Flower Moon focuses on this period, the Osage Reign of Terror. Martin Scorsese’s film adaptation of the book is scheduled to be released this summer.) Throughout the 1920s, many head rights left the tribe.

Since then, the original agreement between the government and headright holders has been amended several times in an effort to make the system less vulnerable to abuse, but the way the federal government distributes funds to headright holders remains controversial to this day.

Richard and the Modern Headright Debate

Soon after Richard Lonsinger received his first quarterly check from the BIA, he began educating himself about the history of the headright system. “I dug into what it was and what it meant,” he said.

In addition to the complex and violent history, Lonsinger also came to understand the current legal battles over the control and management of the trust. A series of lawsuits, grouped as Fletcher v. United States, allege financial mismanagement and a lack of transparency by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Another lawsuit, filed by the Osage tribe itself, resulted in a $380 million settlement for headright holders in 2011.

A big issue is the issue of non-Osage headright holders. Bloomberg Newsa quarter of the head rights were paid to non-Osage people. Businesses, schools, churches, and individuals not affiliated with the Osage became head rights holders in some way.

Lonsinger likened the government’s reluctance to provide a fuller record of where money goes from head-right holders to a legacy of the past. “It’s like reading a 19th-century history of Native Americans,” he said.

In 2018, Longsinger was recruited as a plaintiff in a new class action lawsuit in Fletcher v. United States. Jason Aamodt, the lead attorney in the case, believed that including Longsinger, a non-Osage Native American headright holder, would strengthen the case. For Longsinger, helping to fight for what he believed to be Native American rights in court was deeply meaningful on a personal level.

“I’m just proud to have had the opportunity to be part of this case. It’s meaningful, you know?” Lonsinger said. “Here, I feel like I’m not part of a case, but I’m part of a bigger case.”

In the decade since Richard first tried to claim his share of his birth mother’s head right, he has spent a lot of time thinking about its meaning and who he thinks should own it. Several years ago, he decided who the head right should go to after his death. In his estate planning, he made it clear that he wanted the head right to be left to the Osage Nation.

“I mean, I lived half my life without it,” he said. “So, you know, when I’m gone, what does it mean? They deserve it more.”

This episode was produced by Willa Rubin, with assistance from Alyssa Jeong Perry and Emma Peaslee. Design by Brian Jarboe, with fact checking by Sierra Juarez. Editing by Keith Romer, with assistance from Shannon Shaw Duty. osage news.

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