A tribal injustice

For his new true-crime drama, Martin Scorsese enlisted a chief of the Osage Nation to make sure it was authentic. Steve Rose talked to them both

- Steve Rose

GEOFFREY STANDING BEAR, chief of the Osage Nation, is about to get changed into his tuxedo, bow tie and traditional blanket for the London premiere of Killers of the Flower Moon. This will be the fifth time he's seeing the three-and-a-half-hour movie. "You need to see it more than once to get the depth." Mind you, the second time, at the Cannes film festival, he couldn't really pay attention. "It was hard to concentrate on the film because I was always looking at famous people," he says, laughing. Like who? "I saw Cate Blanchett. She was right there. I just wanted to go up to her and say, 'Hey, do you have an elven gift for me?' But I thought I better be quiet, I'm gonna embarrass people. But, you know, I'm sitting next to Robert De Niro - that's pretty famous."

Chief Standing Bear, a serene, healthy-looking man of 70, seems to be enjoying his detour into showbiz, but few people can have had firmer grounds for suspicion than the Osage Nation when Hollywood came knocking at the door. In the broad sense, American film and television have not been renowned for sensitive portrayals of Native Americans. Having already suffered the apocalyptic invasion of European settlers, Native Americans spent much of the past century seeing their history reconfigured as entertainment, invariably with themselves as the bad guys.

In addition, the Osage have particular reason to distrust outsiders, as victims of one of the worst American crimes of the 20th century. Now known as "the reign of terror", it is a saga so brazenly evil it is almost impossible to fathom, combining institutional deceit, economic exploitation, blithe racism and calculated mass murder.