What We Can Learn From These Native American Comedies

- Save the chips they're falling out.

- Wait, my mom's texting me.

- Go gamble away your 401ks.

(chuckles) - [TV] There's a new wave of Native American comedy on TV.

- Our writer's room is 50% Native.

- [TV] Which means more nuanced perspectives on Native American culture.

From superstition, - [Girl] Owl!

- [Boy] Oh my God!

- [Girl] Yo, that's not a good sign.

- [TV] To Native food, - ♪ Greasy frybread, ♪ greasy, greasy, frybread ♪ - [TV] To political movements like Land Back, the main topic of this episode.

- You see the graffiti on that sign back there?

- Oh, yeah, yeah.

I think it said "Land Back.

Didn't it?"

- Well what do you suppose it means?

- Land Back is simply the idea that Indigenous lands should be returned to Indigenous people.

- [TV] Let's get a historian's take on how Native peoples are taking back their narratives and their land through film and TV.

- You have taken the land, which is rightfully ours.

- The most prominent Native American character that I grew up with wasn't actually Native American.

It was Wednesday Addams.

- [TV] Meet one of the writers and actors from Rutherford Falls, a Native American comedy show.

- My name is Taietsarón:Sere 'Tai' Leclaire.

I am Mohawk.

- Years from now, my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations.

- [Tai] She is asked to play Pocahontas in this play and delivers this incredible monologue about the reality of what it was to be Native American and burned the place down.

- And for all these reasons, I've decided to scalp you, and burn your village to the ground.

(children yelling) - It was truly shocking to see a white person say the reality of the situation.

Native American representation growing up was very limited.

Especially for me, a kid in the nineties.

It was Indian in the Cupboard, Pocahontas, Dances With Wolves.

But Dances With Wolves wasn't allowed in our house.

Anything that was sort of like a big Hollywood production with a lot of Natives, that was very much from the lens of the white gaze was very much not playing on the VHS.

- [TV] Hmm, what did Native representation used to look like?

- We see Native people in so many westerns.

- [TV] Meet our historian and scholar of Native American representation in film and TV.

- I'm Liza Black, I'm a citizen of Cherokee Nation.

Westerns have, I think come to define how America sees Native people.

Films of the 1940s and 1950s taught Americans that Native people were meant to be conquered.

And very much told a story that white nationalism is about defeat of Native people.

In the 1960s and 1970s, you see young people of all walks of life rebelling and trying to create something new.

For Native people, that was a full scale rebellion against the federal government.

- They're gonna start giving land away, they should start with the American Indian people.

- You see that in the takeover at Alcatraz, where you have young people from tribes all over the country, who have been relocated to cities by the federal government, rise up and take back the land.

You see this relationship developing between Native people who have been advocating for their own rights to participate in the culture industry, specifically the film and television industry, pairing up with these activists.

- People are not listening to the Indians.

They're not trying to help.

There's no, there's no way that the Indians can make themselves heard.

So they're occupying these pieces of land which are theirs by right of treaty.

- The reason why we took Alcatraz, I could mention the Sioux Treaty of 1868, but then there's also congressional enactment within the last part of the 1800s that gives us title to the land as well.

- Beginning in like the 1960s, the American Indian movement made some national strides in terms of protesting the American government.

One of those leaders, Russell Means, actually sort of got so much media attention that the film industry started hiring him for movies, like Last of the Mohicans.

Russell Means broke out in that film, as did Wes Studi, who is the only Native actor to receive an Academy Award.

- I'd simply like to say, it's about time.

- I think that if we hadn't had these shifts, however small, in the 1960s, we wouldn't be where we're at today.

I'm really, really excited about Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls, these two television shows that broke out in 2021 during the pandemic and generated just a tremendous conversation on where Native people stand today.

- We're getting to just like lift up the curtain a little bit and see all these wonderful, beautiful people and stories.

- They're directed by Native people.

They're written by Native people.

The crew members are often Native people.

That's never really happened before.

- There are over 500 federally recognized tribes and that's only the federally recognized ones.

There are over 600 nations in Canada.

Some of us are suburban Native, some of us are city Indian, some of us are res kids.

- [Kid] NDN Mafia's been tellin' everybody they're at war with y'all.

Told 'em y'all was the Reservation Dogs.

- Reservation Dogs is explicitly about that kind of divide between reservation Indians, or people who grew up on the reservation and Indians who didn't.

Sort of taking Americans into the world that many Native people inhabit, which is what people call "res life."

Rutherford Falls is about a modern American town.

The town is set near a reservation and near a Native casino.

Terry, the tribal casino manager, he is really kind of tapping into this cultural zeitgeist of the moment, which is Land Back.

- We're gonna sue Nathan Rutherford.

- What do you want?

- Something that was ours to begin with.

- [Tai] That part of the story was very much inspired by a lot of our nations and tribes relations with trying to use the law to get land back to essentially honor these treaties and land treaties that were signed 300, 400 years ago which, all of which have been broken both within the United States and in Canada.

- I won't rest until my nation gets every single thing that was taken from them.

- What Terry's trying to take back and what I think I more personally affiliate Land Back with is we have a connection to the Earth that not many Western cultures do.

Land is sacred.

- Have you ever heard of the Seven Generations?

- It talks about the Seven Generations.

This is an embodiment of Native values.

- It's a practice to ensure that the Earth and our language and our people will not only exist, but thrive seven generations from now.

- It was a practice that I just blindly assumed everyone followed.

'Cause like how could you not do something for the seven generations from now?

Because that is truly the, it's the continuation of your people.

- [TV] So Tai, what's it like to write for one of these shows?

- Our writer's room is 50% Native, and the best part was that we were all of different tribes, different nations.

We were able to have conversations that we wouldn't have if there was only one Native writer in the room.

- Many apologies, I was hoping to do a quick Minishonka land acknowledgement.

- What I love on the show with his land acknowledgement is that he does it in Mohawk, which is my language.

(speaking in Mohawk) - He does the thing that like scared non-Natives the most which is he says it exclusively Mohawk, but peppers in terrifying words.

- (speaking in Mohawk) Unfortunate genocide - There was something almost like punk rock-ish and protestory about not having the subtitles.

So it's specifically for the people who understand the language, who can get a laugh out of the speech and for the Natives who don't speak Mohawk they, they understand what's happening - [TV] Tai and Liza, what does the future of Native stories look like?

- I'm very much excited for this world where we have more nuance Native characters who are just characters, who aren't mascots, who aren't these stereotypes of what people think a Native person is.

- As a historian who has devoted my career to studying America, particularly Native America, I am very optimistic about the future of representation of Native peoples.

What's happening today with these television shows is absolutely incredible and that's only going to generate more talent and more attention and more interest in Hollywood.

- [TV] Thanks for watching Historian's Take.

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