According to Leonardo DiCaprio, Native depictions in Hollywood are in for a "great reckoning." The Oscar winner stars in Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, a crime epic about the slaughter of the Osage Nation in the 1920s. Before the film's Oct. 20 release, DiCaprio is opening up about Scorsese's delicate handling of the subject matter and the film industry's past failures to accurately represent Native Americans.
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"Hollywood has a long history and checkered past in its depiction of Native American people," DiCaprio told Vogue UK in a Sept. 19 interview. "We need to do more. You know, we are coming towards a great reckoning of our past."
Killers of the Flower Moon, which also stars Robert De Niro and Native actress Lily Gladstone, is based on the true story of the Reign of Terror against the Osage Nation in the 1920s. Many Native Americans living on the Osage Reservation were wealthy due to an oil boom on their land, so white residents orchestrated a massacre of the Osage people.
The film tells the true story of Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio), a white man who marries Mollie Kyle (Gladstone), a member of the Osage Nation.
"It's a completely forgotten part of American history and an open wound that still festers," DiCaprio said of the Osage murders, adding that he hopes Killers of the Flower Moon serves as an accurate, and ultimately healing, retelling: "The more that these stories can be told in a truthful way, the more it can be a healing process."
For her part, Gladstone recently spoke out against historical and contemporary Native depictions in film and TV, calling Yellowstone "delusional" and "deplorable." Gladstone noted that she's glad Killers of the Flower Moon is being labeled a tragedy, not a Western.
DiCaprio likened the Reign of Terror to the Tulsa Race Massacre, which was top-of-mind for him while living in Tulsa during filming: "It was very important to me to realize these were two sides of the same coin... people of color that were independently wealthy amid a massive population of incredibly racist white people who want to extract those resources at any cost," he said, adding: "Look at Standing Rock. Look at what's going on in Indonesia, in the Amazon. These places that are home to incredible resources are also places that are most drenched in blood."
DiCaprio and Gladstone's comments come on the heels of Scorsese's admission that he rewrote Killers of the Flower Moon to shift its focus away from the white characters and towards the Osage.
"After a certain point, I realized I was making a movie about all the white guys... meaning I was taking the approach from the outside in, which concerned me," the legendary director told TIME.
Killers of the Flower Moon also stars Jesse Plemons (The Power of the Dog), Tantoo Cardinal (Wind River), John Lithgow (The Old Man), Oscar winner Brendan Fraser (The Whale) and Cara Jade Myers (Rutherford Falls).
Killers of the Flower Moon is in theaters Oct. 20 before heading to Apple TV+.
