Imagine a community where the majority of the people are Indigenous! A place where it is common to see culture brought forward into modern everyday living. Where people want to be safe, to have strong communities, good food, good health, and to have no bad choices. In that place, the people often speak their traditional language and they may casually refer to colonial constructs as the basis for much of the bad in us. Yet they acknowledge that both good and evil permeate our spirits and even if we could remove the colonial influence from who we are now, there would still be some bad. While we work to bring clarity to that history and to the nuances that influence us in this present, we can process it more succinctly in the writing and presentation of stories in media. We can experience and absorb that community where being Indigenous is a matter of fact and not just a parade, a powwow, or a museum.
“Dark Winds”, “Reservation Dogs” and “Rutherford Falls” are a few of the recent noteworthy series that bring these communities to life in ways that peoples scattered around the world and often disconnected from their origins cannot experience. These shows all have in common Zahn Tokiya-ku McClarnon, a prolific thespian who is, in all things Indigenous, as a matter of fact.
“Tell you what high-pockets, I’ll pretend your bank robbers are Navajo, if you’ll pretend my murder victims are white. Let’s see which one of us does our job quicker.” Zahn Tokiya-ku McClarnon as Lt. Joe Leaphorn in Dark Winds.
“Emphatically and without apology, we claim that world where “still here” is embedded in our DNA- and our culture is a matter of fact”. Sandra Hope
Zahn McClarnon, Kiowa Gordon, Jessica Matten, Deanna Allison, Rainn Wilson, Elva Guerra, Jeremiah Bitsui, Eugene Brave Rock, Noah Emmerich
Directed by: Chris Eyre, Sanford Bookstaver
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