Gangsters are the villains in 'Killers of the Flower Moon,' but the biggest thief of Native American wealth was the US government

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Torivio Fodder, University of Arizona

(THE CONVERSATION) Director Martin Scorsese’s new movie, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” tells the true story of a string of murders on the Osage Nation’s land in Oklahoma in the 1920s. Based on David Grann’s meticulously researched 2017 book, the movie delves into racial and family dynamics that rocked Oklahoma to the core when oil was discovered on Osage lands.

White settlers targeted members of the Osage Nation to steal their land and the riches beneath it. But from a historical perspective, this crime is just the tip of the iceberg.

From the early 1800s through the 1930s, official U.S. policy displaced thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral homes through the policy known as Indian removal. And throughout the 20th century, the federal government collected billions of dollars from sales or leases of natural resources like timber, oil and gas on Indian lands, which it was supposed to disburse to the land’s owners. But it failed to account for these trust funds for decades, let alone pay Indians what they were due.

I am the manager of the University of Arizona’s...