Equality

By Rachel Adams-Heard

A hundred and fifty years ago, the Osage Nation bought a stretch of prairie the size of Delaware, in what's now Oklahoma. The Osage owned the land and everything beneath it.

Today, much of present-day Osage County has left Osage hands. In some cases, appropriation was swift and brutal: Dozens of Osages were murdered for their share of lucrative mineral rights to this oil-rich land, a period often referred to as the Reign of Terror. But other transfers of wealth played out more subtly—dollar by dollar and acre by acre, over decades—helped along by policies created by the US government.

“In Trust” is the story of that system. A system that moved wealth from Native hands to White ones. One that three brothers learned to operate, laying the foundation for a modern American dynasty of land and influence that continues to this day.

Episode 1
The List
09/06/2022
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For years, Osage citizens had to sift through rumors and wrinkled pieces of paper for clues to one pressing question: Who ended up with shares of their reservation’s mineral rights? The answer was a secret, guarded by the federal government. Until one day in 2009, when a local newspaper published a list of those names – including some familiar ones. Learn more in our episode guide.

Episode Notes | Transcript
Episode 2
The Headright
09/06/2022
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The extended Drummond family includes TV’s “Pioneer Woman,” Ree Drummond, and Oklahoma Attorney General candidate Gentner Drummond. Add up the holdings of scores of family members, and the Drummonds today are the biggest landowner in Osage County. Many Osages have long wondered: How’d the family get so much land? An out-of-print book and hours of forgotten tapes reveal clues. They also point to an untold story of one Osage woman’s resilience. Learn more in our episode guide.

Episode Notes | Transcript
Episode 3
The Osage Price
09/13/2022
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The Drummonds’ story, and a lot of the family’s early wealth and influence in Osage County, grew from one of their first businesses here, a store that the family patriarch took over in the early 1900s. It sold everything from flour to caskets. Much of it on credit. But the store had another function: It provided its owners financial leverage over Osage customers, in life and in death.

Episode Notes | Transcript
Episode 4
The Guardianship
09/20/2022
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By the 1920s, Fred Gentner Drummond was deeply embedded in Osage financial affairs. His store extended credit to Osages. He administered the estates of many of these same Osages – approving big debt repayments from them to his own store. But Fred Gentner and his brothers had another lever – a way to make Osage money work for themselves, and their friends. Hear how it worked, and how one Osage man fought back.

Episode Notes | Transcript
Episode 5
The Association
9/27/2022
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Charles Wah-hre-she was an influential Osage religious leader. He died in Oklahoma City of a gallbladder illness, according to his 1923 death certificate. But for decades, Wah-hre-she’s family has heard a different story of his death. A descendant searches for answers, and tries to understand how a funeral bill grew so big it triggered alarms in the US Congress.

Episode Notes | Transcript
Episode 6
The Middlewoman
10/04/2022
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She was hailed by the local press as a hero of Oklahoma’s drive for statehood, which divided communal Native lands into individual parcels that could be leased or sold. A few years later, she was assembling tracts of Osage lands that she flipped to ranchers including Jack Drummond. But Anna Marx LaMotte’s tactics were anything but heroic. This is the story of how one White woman worked to reshape Osage County in the years after allotment, and how US policies furthered what she started.

Episode Notes | Transcript
Episode 7
The Ranch Bid
10/11/2022
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Hundreds of allotments left Osage hands, swiftly at first, and then over decades. Not long ago, the Osage Nation had just 30 days to try to get a big chunk of this land bank, when a prized ranch was put on the block by billionaire Ted Turner.

Episode Notes | Transcript
Episode 8
The Pivot
10/18/2022
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A century has passed since a lot of the transactions that helped the three Drummond brothers amass tens of thousands of acres of Osage land. Now, with the Osage Nation seeking self-determination and Gentner Drummond running for state office, the fates of Osage and Drummond descendants continue to cross.

Episode Notes | Transcript
Episode 9
The Moonscape
5/9/2023
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Since “In Trust” aired, we’ve heard more stories about how Native wealth was exploited. Not far from Osage County, citizens of the Quapaw Nation tell eerily similar accounts of unexplained deaths and mismanaged mineral resources. Lead and zinc mining around Picher, Oklahoma, provided bullets for two world wars, but left Native families to restore land that looks more like the surface of the moon than the prairie.

Episode Notes | Transcript
Episode 10
The ’Oklahoma!’ Haze
5/16/2023
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There was one portrait of Oklahoma’s history that towered over all others. One with sweeping prairies and singing and dancing cowboys. The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! became synonymous with America’s westward expansion. It also left out a key part of the state’s history and people.

Episode Notes | Transcript
Episode 11
The Return to Osage County
11/21/2023
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A little over a year from the first episode of In Trust has passed. Hosts Rachel Adams-Heard and Allison Herrera return to Osage County to discuss the reporting and story with members of the community. We’ll share highlights from the panel, moderated by Shannon Shaw Duty of the Osage News, and talk about Allison’s recent reporting from the premiere of “Killers of the Flower Moon” in Cannes.

Episode Notes | Transcript

Additional reading

Rachel Adams-Heard is a reporter for Bloomberg News in Houston. After five years covering energy and climate, she's now on the investigations team.
Allison Herrera is a radio and print journalist who has covered climate and reproductive rights. She is currently the Indigenous Affairs reporter for KOSU in Oklahoma.

Senior producer Davis Land
Executive producer Samantha Storey
Senior editor Jeff Grocott
Addition production by Victor Yvellez
Production support from Gilda Di Carli
Sound engineering by Blake Maples
Theme music by Laura Ortman
Photography by Shane Brown
Cartography by Evan Applegate, David Ingold, Jeremy CF Lin, Linly Lin, Devon Pendleton
With additional assistance from: Robert Blau, Aeriel Brown, Frank Culshaw, Stephanie Davidson, McKinnon Dekuyper, Emily Engelman, Daniel Ferrara, Michael Frazer, Thomas Houston, Cynthia Hoffman, Jaclyn Kessler, Francesca Levy, Flynn McRoberts, Eugene Reznik, Rakshita Saluja, Margaret Sutherlin, Bernadette Walker, Jane Yeomans

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