2 min read

White people 🦬

On finding common ground
White people 🦬
Oklahoma wildflower. GDMNT | Mike Keeling

"The necks of the smaller flowers break and their petals flutter away, and before long they are buried underground." 

David Grann, "Killers of the Flower Moon"

> hayseeds for jesus | the flower moon

While The Branson Family continued to show sincere interest, I forged ahead with my lecture series on the bison we sold at the Tulsa coffee shop where I worked. 

The young daughter wearing a "Jesus loves you" shirt was smiling and nodding with all of the conviction in the world.

Our bison is from the Osage Nation just west of Tulsa County, I said. We were their first wholesale customers.

  • What I didn't say was that the bison had nearly gone extinct thanks in part to mass killings by white people

I did say that the Osage were managing their herd today on a vast ranch they purchased from the founder of CNN. I didn’t say that the land had once belonged to the Osage.

I also didn't say the Osage at one time owned 1.5 million acres in the area before the land was gradually fragmented and fell into new hands.

  • I did say the Osage Nation was the focal point of the Martin Scorsese film set in Oklahoma "Killers of the Flower Moon." 🌙
  • I didn’t say the film portrayed swindling, deceit, and violence directed at the Osage by white people during the 1920s. 

But as I talked, MAGA Dad stunned me. He had loved "Killers of the Flower Moon" and believed it was an important book and movie.

My mind stormed with dissonance. Is this a prank? 

🔳
Grann, David. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2017.

He went further. MAGA Dad expressed genuine sorrow over the historic mistreatment of Oklahoma’s Native American tribes.

He was so charming, I wondered if he might be drunk.

I'd just automatically assumed that he and his family wouldn't care about such things.

My subconscious mind had judged them before I had a chance to consciously judge them. 

Our minds do this every minute of every day.

  • next time "We're sometimes humble just to be flashy."
  • listening T. Rex "20th Century Boy"

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