Before cavorting with Rita Ora at this year’s Met Gala in New York and giving us a trippy tour of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Taika Waititi was known as a sensitive historian of childhood escapades.
His early feature films, Boy (2010) and Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016), both set in New Zealand, depicted young people on the cusp of innocence and knowledge in touching and hilarious ways.
In this Disney+ comedy series, much of the same enchantment has been relocated to Indian Territory, Oklahoma. Now, though, Waititi has taken a back seat to co-creator and showrunner Sterlin Harjo, a native Oklahoman and member of the Muscogee and Seminole Nations.
Bear, Elora Danan (yep, like the baby in the 1980s film Willow), Cheese, and Willie Jack are portrayed by D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Devery Jacobs, Lane Factor, and Paulina Alexis, four Native American youths who have launched on a criminal spree to fund their Californian escape. This small village, with its cycles of poverty and addiction, is blamed for their friend Daniel’s death.
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Each of these young actors is an amazing discovery, with Alexis having more than enough outlaw bravado to walk alongside Mr. Brown, Mr. Pink, and others in the Tarantino classic.
Reservation Dogs also has more seasoned actors, such as Zahn McClarnon (Westworld, Fargo) as Officer Big, the Rez Dogs’ very affable tribal police adversary. He is attempting to make an arrest in the case of the stolen snack truck, but he is not exerting much effort.
Gary Farmer, whose appearances in Jim Jarmusch’s eccentric western Dead Man and seminal Native American film Smoke Signals (1998) make him one of the most well-known Indigenous performers, has a delightful cameo as Uncle Brownie, a reclusive stoner elder. Fast-food wrappers indicate the contrary despite his assertion that he “lives primarily off the land.” Dallas Goldtooth, however, from Harjo’s all-Native comedy troupe, the 1491s, provides the most amount of laughter.
He portrays a bare-chested, ancestral spirit guide who appears to Bear every time he is knocked out (which is frequently) and claims to have been at the Battle of the Little Bighorn: “Well, I didn’t actually fight, but I came over the hill all rugged-like… You and your daggy-ass friends, what are you doing for your people?”
Reservation Dogs is able to demolish years of myth and misinformation because of one simple, important innovation: practically everyone involved in the production is Native American, providing a perspective that never panders to the fetishistic gaze of outsiders. Instead, this play explores the tug-of-war of home: the simultaneous need to belong and to be free.
It is a common coming-of-age experience and one that is likely heightened when your homelands have been stolen and resold multiple times by colonizers, as recorded by history. Reservation Dogs does not delve too deeply into any of this, much like how youngsters tend to skim the surface of generational tragedy, aware yet seemingly unaffected.
Already burdened with “out-of-work Indian rapper” fathers, turf wars, and acid reflux brought on by a diet of fried catfish and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, they have enough to deal with. Bad omen owls are appropriately pixelated as a result of their on-the-fly adjustment to the ancient methods. Traditional beading medallions are sought, but they can only be obtained from a sour-tempered aunt with a penchant for phallic motifs.
Nevertheless, whether acknowledged or not, the terrible past is ever-present. Uncle Brownie uses a blown-up $20 bill featuring the portrait of the seventh president of the United States, Andrew Jackson, for target practise. Occasionally, the connotation is more oblique: Officer Big, the sole law enforcement representation, alludes to a jurisdictional muddle that adds to the current tragedy of missing and murdered Indigenous women in North America (MMIW).
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This is a long overdue milestone because Native Americans have been portrayed on cinema for so long as clichéd seductive squaws, warring “injuns,” or gnomic spirit guides. However, Harjo’s greatest accomplishment is his ability to carry the tremendous burden of representation so lightly. Reservation Dogs mixes its Native American background and its US independent film heritage in every scene in a strong and smokable blend. So ignite it. As Uncle Brownie would say, “This is God’s medicine!”
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Reservation Dogs Trailer
FAQs
Is Reservation Dogs a quality program?
The Native American-themed series ‘Reservation Dogs’ is one of television’s best. Set in Oklahoma’s Native American territory, the show combines satire, drama, and tribal knowledge, as well as the tragic history of American Indians, to create a creative, humorous, and emotional series.
Where was the movie Reservation Dogs filmed?
The major filming locations for the first season, which concluded in July 2021, were Okmulgee, Tulsa, Sand Springs, Beggs, Inola, and Terlton, all in northeast Oklahoma. FX renewed the series for a second season, which will also be filmed in Okmulgee, on September 2, 2021.
Why do the characters in Reservation Dogs dislike owls?
Culturally, owls are death omens with eyes made from the nails of spirits; features such as this distinguish Reservation Dogs from many other depictions of Indigenous characters on film.