Killers of the Flower Moon

Critiques, genius, and how art can change the world.

When I was nine years old, my parents gave me a couple of books to read: Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. I’d never exactly been a sheltered child, but experiencing these frank accounts of the worst aspects of the country I lived in shook me, and I remember crying as I read about the horrors people had undergone in the name of various “frontiers.”

Of course, I also knew that American Indian peoples weren’t a relic from the past: my parent’s connections to native friends assured me of that bit of knowledge. Not all of my peers were so lucky, however. As a White boy within a mostly-White community, my knowledge lived in an outsider bubble that rarely got unpacked. Even among home-schooled progressive families, these issues were often taught as history rather than an ongoing experience.

I preface my review of Killers with this because my primary critique of the film relates to this frequent aspect of a White perspective. Namely, that native stories are historical tales of horror and pain. This is a problem because native communities exist all over the country — and these historical stories are part of an evolving tapestry of history. The context of the past must be understood within the context of…