AMERIND-US-SE-L Archives

From: "sps" <>
Subject: SOONER or later we watch a Tom Cruise movie
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 22:02:46 -0400

'Far and Away' is a movie depicting an Irish family in the last big land grab in 1890's Oklahoma. But it was
reservation land that they got. It is bizarre beyond description that the general sentiment toward the US at that time and even
now is of the government providing a haven for these immigrants and being noble in their deeds. But at whose expense?
The US didn't even give them land that they owned - they gave them someone else's land. It blows my mind.

Steve


Here's an excerpt from: http://www.potawatomi.org/hownikan/9903/tribal_members_hurt.htm


"Traveling to Oklahoma, Egan reported on Mary Fish's situation. Ms. Fish is a Muscogee (Creek) who receives just a few
dollars a year of income from six wells that produce Oklahoma sweet crude on her family's 40 acres. Fish said that, at a time
when oil was selling for $10 a barrel, she was told by a BIA official that she was getting just $3 a barrel. She says that she
received no explanation for the price difference.

Ms. Fish reported getting very small checks in payment for oil income - $3 to $5 a month. However, after two lawyers who
took her case showed up on Fish's land and drillers questioned them, Fish received a $3,000 check, with no explanation.

The New York Times article also tells the story of Mose Bruno, a Citizen Potawatomi. "The land that was held in trust for the
descendants of Mose and Frances Bruno, for example, was sold in the 1960's to satisfy a $97 grocery bill," the story
reports.

"No one is certain why this was permitted, and the family points to it as an example of a flagrant abuse. Oil has been
pumped from this land for much of this century, and oil is still being drawn from the Bruno ground today," reporter Egan
writes.

The article reports that Bruno family descendants have been trying, for more than 30 years, to learn why the government's
trust manager sold this trust property. Johnny Flynn, a Bruno family descendant and member of the Citizen Potawatomi
Nation, told the Times, "You're looking at the grandchildren of the original Indian allottees, and we're dealing with the
grandchildren of the Oklahoma Sooners. Guess which side usually ends up with the land?"

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• SOONER or later we watch a Tom Cruise movie by "sps" <>