Movies

Human fear of sharks has deep roots. Written works and art from the ancient world contain references to sharks preying on sailors as early as the eighth century B.C.E. Relayed back to land, stories about shark encounters have been embellished and amplified. Together with the fact that from time to time – very rarely – sharks bite humans, people have been primed for centuries to imagine terrifying situations at sea. In 1974, Peter Benchley’s bestselling novel “Jaws” fanned this fear into a wildfire that spread around the world. The book sold more than 5 million copies in the U.S. within a year and was quickly followed by Steven Spielberg’s 1975 movie, which became the highest-grossing film in history at that time. Virtually all audiences embraced the idea, depicted vividly in the movie and its sequels, that sharks were malevolent, vindictive creatures that prowled coastal waters seeking to feed on unsuspecting bathers. But “Jaws”...

Director Martin Scorsese’s new movie, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” tells the true story of a string of murders on the Osage Nation’s land in Oklahoma in the 1920s. Based on David Grann’s meticulously researched 2017 book, the movie delves into racial and family dynamics that rocked Oklahoma to the core when oil was discovered on Osage lands. White settlers targeted members of the Osage Nation to steal their land and the riches beneath it. But from a historical perspective, this crime is just the tip of the iceberg. From the early 1800s through the 1930s, official U.S. policy displaced thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral homes through the policy known as Indian removal. And throughout the 20th century, the federal government collected billions of dollars from sales or leases of natural resources like timber, oil and gas on Indian lands, which it was supposed to disburse to the land’s owners. But it failed to account for these t...