New movie paints picture of Native American history
The recently released movie, “Killers of the Flower Moon” is the story of a series of murders that took place in Oklahoma against the Osage Nation.
But crimes against Native Americans are hardly unique to that tribe, as described by Wena Supernaw, head of the Quapaw Nation, which owns and operates Saracen Casino Resort on land the Quapaws were chased from almost 200 years ago.
Supernaw, was elected chair of the Quapaws in July and is serving out the unexpired term that was vacated by former chair, Joseph Byrd.
Supernaw is retired from a 30-year career with MetLife where she was in corporate finance and becomes only the third woman to be elected as chair of the Quapaws since 1956 when the position was first decided by a vote.
The new chair, who is half Osage and half Quapaw, described herself as a history buff as she eagerly described how the Quapaw, which ranged over all of Arkansas and into Louisiana, Oklahoma and Missouri, lost their native lands.
Under duress, the Quapaws ceded 20 million acres in Arkansas to the federal government, hanging on to between 2 million and 3 million acres in the Little Rock area.
“Six years later, in 1824, they said ‘we want the rest of your land,’” Supernaw said.
For a time, the Quapaws were moved to the Red River near the Caddo Indians, she said, but there was flooding and sickness and their numbers dwindled. They returned to the Pine Bluff area where Chief Saracen still had land. But in 1830, the Quapaws were moved to Ottawa County, Okla., where they live to this day.
Many tribes have similar stories to tell about being removed from their lands and then preyed upon by settlers and the government.
The story of the Flower Moon, as told by David Grann in his 2017 best-selling book, was unique to the Osage tribe, Supernaw said, but hardly unique to the Indian experience.
“Every tribal nation had resources taken, stolen, misused,” she said. “Land, minerals, forests, game, lifeways — all taken away from them.”
The Grann book tells the true story of a wealthy white businessman who claimed to be a true friend to the Osage. Instead, he was engineering their deaths so as to be in a position to take their money and inheritance. At the time, the Osage were some of the richest people in the country because of the oil found on their land. Those deaths and others were so heinous they led to the founding of the FBI.
“This movie is significant to us all,” Supernaw said, “because we’ve all had something similar happen to us.”
She said she was so taken by the story that she was looking into buying out a theater in the Ottawa area for a private showing for any of the members of the nine tribes that are settled there.
“We tend to do things together,” she said. “The parallels of what the Osage went through and what other tribes have gone through are uncanny.”
Supernaw said what stood out to her most from the story was that the Osages didn’t deserve their newfound riches.
“How dare all those dirty Indians have all this wealth,” she said. “Somehow they were lesser human beings – subhuman. So it was perfectly fine to take their wealth from them because they didn’t deserve it anyway.”
The movie was shot in Oklahoma, and some of the extras in the cast are from Ottawa County. Still, the story told is sometimes not one that Indians want to bring up.
“Some families will talk about what happened to their ancestors and some families won’t,” Supernaw said. “It’s an open secret and everybody knows what happened to grandfather, but the family may not want to talk about it.”
As for her new position with the Quapaw Nation, Supernaw said she was humbled by being elected and would likely run again in July when the position is up for election.
“It’s an honor to me,” she said. “As a retired person, it’s nice to be able to offer something back in a way that can be used not as part of tribal government but for members of the tribe.”
Supernaw said her mission is to safeguard the assets of the tribe “not just for today but for many missions to come.”
And as for Pine Bluff and the casino, which sits on what could be considered the epicenter of where the tribe once lived those many years ago, Supernaw said the Quapaw Nation “loves it.”
“We are absolutely fascinated by what’s going on in Pine Bluff,” she said.”It’s very exciting.”