The movie Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of David Grann’s non-fiction book, which premiered this past weekend at the Cannes Film Festival, was initially scripted as a true crime Western. Leonardo DiCaprio was signed up to star as Tom White, the Texas Ranger turned FBI officer who steps off a train in Oklahoma to solve the mystery surrounding murdered Osage Nation members. But the extent to which these murders were a mystery depends on whose lens we’re seeing them through, and who is telling the story. For a white saviour figure like White, the murders, orchestrated by the interlopers marrying into Osage birthrights, was a puzzle to be solved. The members of the Osage Nation on the other hand knew that they were being systemically and brutally murdered for their claim to land by pretty much every white settler flocking in their direction. History repeats itself. And just like today, this Indigenous community had a hard time in the 1920s convincing the law to do anything about the harm being done to them.
Swaths of South Dakota water, grasslands and forests are under federal protection, but climate change recognizes no boundaries. Scientists say South Dakota’s protected lands are vulnerable to pest infestation, wildfire, drought, flooding and more extreme weather in the decades to come. That ranges from a wild stretch of the Missouri River to grasslands in central South Dakota to the Black Hills. Those changes threaten not only the livelihood of the landscapes and their ecosystems, but South Dakota as a whole: its conservation efforts; its two largest industries, tourism and agriculture; and the natural resources residents rely upon. Only a handful of local governments in the state are taking steps to adapt to climate change, such as the Rosebud Sioux Tribe’s Climate Adaptation Plan, Spearfish and Black Hills State University’s Climate Resiliency Plan, and Rapid City’s acceptance of federal climate funding to reduce greenhouse gases and other air pollution.
Those are your headlines at this hour. I’m Colette Keith in the KIPI News center.
