USA : The special agent in charge of the FBI’s Oklahoma City Field Office joined local Native American leaders and the author of a best-selling book about murders on the Osage Nation a century ago for a panel discussion about crime, greed, justice, and the relationship today between the Bureau and Oklahoma’s many Indigenous tribes.
The discussion on October 17 at Oklahoma Christian University featured David Grann, author of “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI,” a historical account of the so-called Reign of Terror in Oklahoma in the early 1920s.
Tribal leaders Geoffrey Standing Bear, principal chief of the Osage Nation, and Governor Bill Anoatubby of the Chickasaw Nation, along with the FBI’s Edward Gray, joined the author in recounting a long string of murders in Osage County and how the FBI got involved in the investigation.
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The special agent in charge of the FBI’s Oklahoma City Field Office joined local Native American leaders and the author of a best-selling book about murder on the Osage Nation a century ago for a panel discussion about crime, greed, justice, and the relationship today between the Bureau and Oklahoma’s many Indigenous tribes.
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At the time, Osage territory sat atop huge oil deposits, making enrolled members of the Osage Nation some of the world’s wealthiest people per capita—and a target for criminals.
“Unquestionably, greed was the driving force. But I would say there was another deeper force at work than just greed,” said Grann, whose 2017 book has been turned into a feature film. “For these systemic crimes to have taken place, greed was fused together with a dehumanization of another people. The perpetrators did not look upon their targets as fully embodied humans with souls and dignity.”
In the early days of the Bureau of Investigation—which became the FBI—a young J. Edgar Hoover saw the importance of this case for the Bureau to investigate and solve. The FBI has special jurisdiction to investigate violent crimes on Native American land through the federal Major Crimes Act.
“We’ve been prioritizing crimes against Native Americans for a very long time.”
Edward Gray, special agent in charge, FBI Oklahoma City
Author David Grann (left) on stage with the Osage Nation’s Geoffrey Standing Bear and the Chickasaw Nation’s Governor Bill Anoatubby.
“The FBI is not new in this game,” said Special Agent in Charge Gray. “We’ve been prioritizing crimes against Native Americans for a very long time.”
Investigating crimes, however, can’t be accomplished by the FBI alone. The Bureau relies on established partnerships with Native American law enforcement agencies to bring cases to a close. The FBI has 22 Safe Trails Task Forces with over 150 agents investigating crimes committed on about 200 reservations nationwide.
When the panel’s moderator suggested the FBI and other federal agencies may still be greeted with suspicion by tribal communities—since federal laws created many of the difficult conditions on reservations—the Osage Nation’s Standing Bear chimed in.
“Things have changed, thank God,” said Standing Bear, whose tribe has over 20,000 registered members and about 6,800 still living in the Osage Nation’s territory in Northern Oklahoma. “We have a working relationship with the FBI and our police. Osage Nation Police works on cases, joint investigations with the FBI. It’s a different world now.”
Bill Anoatubby, governor of the Chickasaw Nation, agreed.
“It’s a mutual respect,” he said. “They’re there to help us. We need them. So, it’s important to have them around. And they’ve helped us over the years on many, many cases.”
Gray said the relationship between Native American tribal leaders and law enforcement is stronger than ever before.
The FBI, he said, will be “in the community, working these crimes with rigor, with the tenacity and the professionalism from the start, and building that trust in the community.”
