- [Sivan] The fact that it's quite literally the steps you
all had to take for me to get here,
and that's some of the kind of respect that I've
been holding onto as I'm moving on through this career,
is that I need to keep it safe for the future
because people had done this before me.
(projector whirring)
- (speaking in foreign language)
Hi, my name is Sydney Freeland.
I am Scottish and Navajo and I'm from Gallup, New Mexico.
It's good to be here with y'all.
- (speaking in foreign language)
Sivan Alyra-Rose (speaking in foreign language).
Hi, my name is Sivan Alyra-Rose.
I played Sasha Yazzie on Chambers
and I am from the San Carlos Apache Reservation.
- Hi, I'm (in foreign language), my name is Marcus LaVoi.
I played Big Frank Yazzie on the show.
I am from Minnesota, Chippewa Nation,
White Earth Reservation.
- I'm Jason Gavin.
I'm one of the writers on Chambers,
and I'm from Washington D.C.
Blackfeet, my mother.
My dad's an Irish guy off the boat,
(everyone laughs) so I kinda see both sides.
- [Marcus] There you go.
- Cousins. - [Sivan] Cousins.
(laughing)
- Cousins.
(laughs) I grew up on the Navajo rez,
and it's like the biggest in the country, right?
And so we're very--
- It's the great Navajo Nation.
- Nations, excuse me (laughs). - It's like in the name.
- Yeah, we don't have Indian tacos, we have Navajo tacos.
(everyone laughs)
But I know it was very self-centered.
Then we'd go to these other reservations
and everything else was always so small, you know?
But yeah, I remember going to Pine Ridge, too,
and being like, oh, wow, this place is legit.
- Pine Ridge is huge, pit stop, yeah.
- That's one of the things that I thought was really cool
about this project was we were able to bring,
I think, a specificity of it,
of particular tribes,
and like Sydney's Navajo, I was married
into a Navajo family.
One of the things that was really special for me was
my daughter, when we were making this,
was a 17-year-old Navajo girl,
so that's really cool to me.
But I thought we were able to bring specificity
and accuracy but also everyone else could bring their
Native brackets from other tribes,
and I think that gave it the best of both worlds.
- And I loved how Chambers had such diversity
in all areas.
We had different races represented in different ways,
and a unity in that environment was real special to me.
It's not about where you come from.
It's where you're going.
It's how you finish your race,
and I think that we came together
as a real tight-knit family out there
and showed what real cultural diversity and unity look like.
That was nice for me.
- 'Cause it's the common story.
We all have these different backgrounds, nationalities,
ethnicities, but there's a common family dynamic,
common personal issues in life.
I feel that's probably my favorite thing
about the whole show, is the normalization
of Native American people, of, yeah,
they go to high school.
They're on Instagram (puffs).
It's so weird to think like that,
but only ever since I've gotten off my reservation
and moved into LA and came here,
that I'm like, wow, why do I feel like an alien?
I was living right next door,
but but for some reason I'm all (puffs)
and outlandish for no reason, you know?
- Yeah, but then adding one more layer to that
because it's a Native American character
in a genre story, and so there's this
sort of psychological, supernatural element to it,
and that was really interesting
and attractive to me.
- It felt cool being on set, that it was
in the Southwest.
It wasn't a backlot somewhere.
- We're actually there. - 'Cause we fake a lot
of things in Hollywood.
- When I met your daughter, you brought her to set
and your son, I was like, oh, my God,
you are the Sasha Yazzie.
You're the young girl (everyone laughs)
who are like this,
and I'm like, please watch the show.
This is for you.
This isn't for me.
This is for you and for the other kids.
I was like, the day you brought her, I was so happy.
- [Jason] That's really cool.
- 'Cause I was like, oh, goodness, thank goodness,
there's like a teen girl who gets me,
who's gonna watch this,
and it was like the best thing ever.
- I remember this story from growing up
where I had this great uncle who was
this very tall, handsome, slender Navajo man.
He's like 6'4".
He tells this story about how he was
in those John Ford Westerns like
in the '30s and '40s and everything.
He doesn't know what the fuck's going on, right?
So he just shows up,
and he gets on a horse.
There's like 15-20 horses on this ridge.
Presumably, 1AD comes up to him
before the take and he says,
"Hey, see that guy with the 10-gallon hat down there?
"That's John Wayne.
"He's gonna point his gun at you,
"and when he does, whoever falls off their horse,
"I'll give you 50 bucks."
(Marcus laughs)
So he doesn't know what's going on.
He doesn't understand the concept of film.
So then, they yell action, and they roll down the hill,
and then the guy in the 10-gallon hat points his gun,
and like 50 guys all fall off their horses
at the same time.
They have to cut.
They have to run and say, "No, no, no,
"just one of you guys falls off!"
- Everyone gets a cut.
- Yeah, and he was saying, "Oh, I didn't know
"what was going on.
"I just wanted 50 bucks."
I always felt like, for me,
there was a duality to that.
It's like both sides of that story.
I guess I always carried that story with me growing up,
'cause it was like there's another perspective to this.
- So not every Indian got 50 bucks on that thing?
- No, they didn't. (everyone laughs)
Probably the only one that did.
- Are you telling me that someone made an agreement
with Indians and then didn't live up to it?
No way. (everyone laughs)
- I'm seeing bad things.
It's dark.
It's messed up.
Becky's bad and she's inside of me.
- Listen, I'm taking you to the doctor first thing
in the morning and we're gonna get to the bottom
of this the right way.
Don't you think the awareness now of a show
like ours is gonna catapult Native American actors
into other genres and different categories?
- That's all you could hope for,
is that they start casting other teen girl roles
with Native American girls.
It could be Shara Horowitz, and she's Apache,
but it doesn't matter.
That's kind of what I wanna see (laughs).
- Yeah, that's the hope, absolutely.
- It all builds on itself 'cause as a writer,
I mean, what helps us 'cause they ask us,
"Oh, who's gonna act that?"
So the more actors they cast, the more people we can point
to as proof of concept, and for better or worse,
this is a business where experience begets more work.
So the more work we can do, and kind of like,
we're all part of the same ecosystem
and help each other out,
the more product comes out that we can be proud of.
Then there are kids out there who see it
and are like, "Oh, yes, I can go and do that."
'Cause that's the other-- - That's what it's all about.
- Crazy thing to me.
They have not had Natives making much content,
but we consume a ton of content.
Go to any rez and look at the satellite dish.
Most reservations are cold.
There's not a lot to do.
People watch stuff.
- You're gonna YouTube and watch TV.
- It's like people act like Natives are
somehow unplugged from it all.
(everyone laughs) No.
We watch as much as anyone.
- I think one of the things that's big for me is being able
to tell stories that aren't just specifically Native.
I am a big fan of genre.
Again, that's one of the things that was hugely attractive
to me about this project, was it was a story
about Natives but it wasn't about them being Native.
It was about the characters.
I think that's how you push a narrative,
evolve a narrative, challenge people's preconceived notions.
It's doing things like this.
Like I was saying earlier, it's like what I love
about this is there's this supernatural element,
but it's not coming from a mystical Native American aspect.
There's other elements at play.
- It's like a good horror story.
It's nice that it's a good horror story.
Yeah, like what you said,
it's not (puffs) Native American magic.
It's general demons and scary stuff going on.
I would say my experience with a trope, funny enough,
was with Chambers for the audition.
I came with my hair straight.
I didn't know what they were looking for.
I hadn't met anybody.
To me, all I understood was usually they cast people
with straight hair and stoicness.
I was like, I'm gonna try my best to look like that.
So I straightened my hair and everything,
and when I went to audition and--
- Did you put the choker on?
- Yeah (laughs), I made sure to be like,
look at how my jaw is, right? (Sydney laughs)
Look at how stoic I am (laughs).
After I did all of that,
and I got the part and everything,
they were like, "Your hair is curly."
I was like, "I know.
"But I can straighten it."
I was genuinely like, "I can straighten it.
"I can put it down."
Because even in my mind, I understand this stereotype
that I don't even look Native American.
But it was so nice and so welcoming how accepting they were.
They were like, "No, we get it.
"We're not gonna push that narrative.
"We're not trying to push this look.
"We're not trying to make you look like anybody.
"We want you to be yourself."
I had never had such validation.
- My experiences with auditioning, too,
that's always kind of my thing.
It's like, what are you?
Are you Mexican?
Are you Italian?
Are you?
No, I'm Native American.
They think if you don't have the real long hair
and the face hair is gone,
then I've heard, "You don't look Indian enough."
Well, (laughing) what does that mean?
- I grew up on the rez, what does that mean?
- But yeah, what are you talking about?
(everyone laughs)
- The other thing that's crazy is that image
in everyone's head comes from a hundred years of stories
that have been told by non-Natives.
- [Sivan] Yeah, recycled.
- It's based on a copy of a copy of copy of a copy of a copy
that wasn't even original to begin with.
- From the Cherokee princess grandma in Alabama (laughs).
- Yeah, the other crazy thing is I see it
within the way we feel growing up internally.
But also, before I came to LA and became a writer,
I worked for American Indian nonprofits,
and worked in Capitol Hill, so I would be talking
to Congressmen and they know very little,
if anything, about Natives.
For the most part, most Americans, most of the stuff
that they do know is not from school or books or anything.
It's just from the power of the image and the narratives
that we've seen on screen.
I think none of us are on any soapbox or anything,
but we do see how things really affect people individually
and then on a policy level, too.
Everyone thinks that Natives all have casinos
and everyone's rich and getting per capitas and stuff,
and that's just not the case.
- I was pleased with production.
I felt they were really good
about letting us, once we knew our characters so well,
they really gave us a lot of flexibility
in what those characters would do.
Even every new director that came
with the different episodes, there was a lot
of free play for us in our characters.
I know you and I would ad lib a lotta times
and experience things, and if it was making sense,
they would let it go.
- If it made sense, yeah.
- If it made sense, they would let it go.
That was unique too.
Usually, it's very detailed and dialogue-oriented.
This was a completely different thing, you know?
- That's so cool as writers, too,
because a lot of times as writers you start
with a blank page with a room, with nothing.
It's like holy crap, this has gotta be a thing.
(Jason talks over Sivan) All the way along the process,
everyone adds and elevates and brings their own stuff there.
That's what I really love when you see stuff
and you're like, you know, you're part of it,
but it's just this group thing
and everyone has made it into something that is better
than the sum of its parts
and adds that authenticity to it.
(suspenseful music)
- It's just so weird that someone had to die
in order for me to live.
- How are you, Frank?
- Thank you both.
Your daughter, she saved Sasha's life.
I can't even begin imagining
what you all have been going through.
- When we were filming out for the Divinity Rock scenes,
we filmed out there and she invited,
was it your uncle?
Was it-- - My uncle, yeah.
- To do a prayer, and pray and bless the lands we were on,
for just being able to use those lands.
And watching it happen, 'cause I'm so used to ceremony.
Ceremony feels natural, very innate to me
'cause I've just seen it from my grandma
and my entire, just growing up in it.
But it was so interesting to just see it
with all of these crew,
people I really was kinda like, huh.
I was really just so amazed seeing everyone come together,
do the whole ceremony, sit there quietly, let him pray.
They couldn't understand a word he was saying,
didn't know why he was throwing water on everybody.
But the respect was there.
It was nothing I'd ever seen before.
It was nothing I'd ever expected to see.
In that moment, I was just like,
wow, we're really doing something good here.
- I think it's important too just
to put past hurts away,
and really just, like I said, focus
on where we're gonna go.
Shows like this, I guess to reiterate, I'm so honored
to be a part of this because we're kinda spearheading
or starting a new thing here, and it's exciting
to be a part of it.
It's groundbreaking.
I just look forward to where it's gonna go
and where shows like this are gonna go.
As you said, there needs to be more Natives
in the industry, writers, actors,
and making a voice for ourself.
But then to take that one step further,
it's about unity for all the races.
I think it's just exciting to be a part of this.
- Well, for me, I think growing up in Gallup,
the concept of filmmaking didn't exist.
Just, purely the concept of picking up a camera
and filming something did not exist.
It wasn't until I left the reservation
and went to school, and it wasn't
until I did four years of school.
In my final semester, I took a class called Video.
I was like, what is this? (everyone laughs)
It was like, I want to do this.
I don't know what this is,
but I'm gonna do it.
I think it's even planting that idea out there
for people that this is a possibility.
- It was never a conscious reality that I worked on
that maybe one day I can be an actor.
As I got older, and the opportunity came up,
and when I started working on Chambers, learning,
as a crash course for actors, what all this is.
I had to learn what an AD, PA, everything,
I had to learn like everything.
- The terminology, yeah, yeah.
- Wow, like here, I'm on set.
I'm like a sponge absorbing this.
But I was always think of the fact
that it's quite literally the steps you all had
to take for me to get here.
'Cause that's the perspective people, I feel like,
you can lose, especially
with the Native American acting community
'cause it's such a small community.
There's only so many people here.
But all of these people in the past,
for me to be here where I am,
telling this story, a lot of people had to suffer,
which is insane.
I mean, that's why Sacheen Littlefeather
went up to the Oscars and said,
"Hey, there's been mistreatment here."
It existed.
It was so insane coming to set, meeting you,
meeting Richard, meeting you, meeting you,
meeting all these other people who have a lot
more experience here than me,
and hearing your guys' perspective.
But knowing that I'm in a safer place,
knowing that you guys came from really dangerous times,
but that it's safer because of that for me now.
That's some kind of respect that I've been holding on to
as I'm moving on through this career,
is that I need to keep it safe for the future
because people had done this before me.
(suspenseful music)
- This is getting weird, Sasha.
(knife chinking)
(disturbing music)