About the film

“The Osage Murders” is a historical documentary focusing on the events that occurred on the Osage reservation in the 1920s. In the early 1900s death was all too common in the oil boom town of Fairfax on the Osage reservation. Osage people were dying at alarming rates. Local authorities were quick to attribute these deaths to “accident,” “suicide” or “poison whiskey.” But when the Smith home was blown up in Fairfax it became apparent to everyone that someone was murdering the Osage people.

The Osage were known as the richest people on earth. Their reservation sat on the largest oil field in U.S. history. The wealth of the Osage was legendary and everybody wanted a piece of the action. Osage tribal members became the target of every thief and con-man for miles. The Osage appealed to the FBI whose investigation uncovered a conspiracy that involved a whole family. Lizzie Q, an Osage woman, and her three daughters held between them 6 headrights. The first step in the conspiracy was to ensure that her daughter, Mollie, inherited all the family’s headrights. The first to die was Mollie’s younger sister, Anna Brown. Lizzie Q’s family wasn’t the only one that suffered the loss of land, money and loved ones. Every Osage was touched by what history remembers as the “Reign of Terror”.

About the Filmmakers

BIG Productions is a Native-owned, independent production company operating out of Edmond, Oklahoma. The owners, Dan Bigbee (Comanche) and Lily Shangreaux (Oglala Lakota), have been in “the business” since 1993. Their first public television production “The Great American Foot Race” premiered on PBS in 2002. Another production “The Coleman Theatre Beautiful”, co-produced with Rogers State University Public Television, won the 2007 RedBud Award for Outstanding Feature Story – Television at the Oklahoma Governor’s Conference on Tourism.

About Vision Maker Media

Vision Maker Media (VMM) is the premiere source of public media by and about Native Americans since 1976. Our mission is empowering and engaging Native people to share stories. We envision a world changed and healed by understanding Native stories and the public conversations they generate. We work with VMM funded producers to develop, produce and distribute programs for all public media. VMM supports training to increase the number of Native Americans and Alaska Natives producing public broadcasting programs. A key strategy for this work is in partnerships with Tribal nations and Native organizations and communities.

Vision Maker Media is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) funded in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). For more information visit visionmakermedia.org.

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