- 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.
Make sure to like, subscribe, and comment.
See you next time!