“Killers of the Flower Moon” had an extraordinary effect. As the Tulsa World reported, it made people want to give their headrights back to the Osage.

In case you’re one of the four Oklahomans who hasn’t seen the movie, read the book or picked up some important state history along the way, the Osage controlled the plentiful oil on their land through the headright system, in which each individual Osage received payment for his or her share of the oil. That headright could not be bought or sold but passed only through inheritance. White people murdered tribal members to gain rights to the oil, which continued to be passed through inheritance.

When some of the modern beneficiaries of that murderous scheme learned the backstory, an astonishing thing happened: They decided to give the headrights back to the Osage.

A list of non-Osage headright owners was first published by the now-defunct Pawhuska newspaper, The Bigheart Times and an updated list was published in 2015 by the Osage News.

The World reported that list is believed to be the most up-to-date, and includes banks, churches, families and universities. The University of Oklahoma told the World their headright funds a scholarship for Osage students. A defunct psychiatric hospital remains on the list, although the World was unable to determine where payments for that headright have been going since the institution closed in 1994. The Oklahoma Historical Society is on the list as the trustee for the White Hair Memorial Center, a repository for Osage artifacts, documents, maps, annuity rolls, oral histories and photographs established by Lillie Burkhart.

Altogether, about one-fourth of the 2,229 headrights belong to non-Osage people or organizations.

Oklahoma Watch (OklahomaWatch.org) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.