My dad said once that he thought a priest belonged in a bar. A bar is where he sometimes slept on pool tables as a boy, the only bar in town in Western Oklahoma that served American Indians. His mom owned it, who set up her homestead by a nearby Cheyenne camp after a Land Run. Going to school, he talked once about how the Osage came to school with $20 bills, while everyone else was broke. This was during the Depression. Why the $20 bills? This land, it turned out, was sitting above some of the largest oil deposits... To extract that oil, prospectors had to pay the two thousand or so Osage for leases and royalties. In 1923, these Osage received collectively what would be worth today more than $400 million. That’s why The forgotten murders of the Osage people for the oil beneath their land gets my attention.
Then the Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances. The family of Mollie Burkhart, an Osage woman, became a prime target.
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In 1923, after the official death toll had climbed to more than two dozen, the Osage Tribal Council issued a resolution demanding that federal authorities investigate the murders. And the case was eventually taken up by the Bureau of Investigation, then an obscure branch of the Justice Department, which was later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Bureau initially badly bungled the investigation. Agents released Blackie Thompson, a notorious outlaw, from jail, hoping to use him as an informant. Instead, he robbed a bank and killed a police officer. Thompson would later be gunned down himself.
Not only does a priest belong in a bar, but sovereignty belongs with the tribes, lest Legal issues surrounding violent crime on reservations further complicate(s) the issue.
Legal issues surrounding violent crime on reservations further complicates the issue. Native American tribes, under federal government law, have limited jurisdiction to indict and sentence defendants in tribal courts. Sometimes, cases are sent to federal court. Figuring out whether the federal or tribal courts have jurisdiction to prosecute violent crimes can drag out cases for years.
Advocates say the process often leaves behind questions for the families and perpetuates historical trauma.
A quagmire of legal jurisdiction
Some reservations are so vast that officers have to travel hours before they secure a crime scene and begin the investigation. If the case falls under the federal Major Crimes Act, it may take even longer for FBI agents, who are generally stationed in larger cities, such as Flagstaff, Phoenix and Tucson, to get there, said attorney Albert Hale, a Navajo and former Arizona legislator.
