M4 P1: Reservation Dogs

Reservation Dogs is a comedy series coming to FX in August that is created by Taika Waititi and Sterling Harjo. The name Taika Waititi may ring a bell as he was the director of Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok. Both of the creators are Indigenous with Taika Waititi being Maori and Sterling Harjo being Seminole Muscogee. The show follows four Indigenous teenagers living in rural Oklahoma who are trying to find any way possible (including stealing and robbing) to make their way to California.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoHewFAkrWU

Clips from this show may be good for analysis by older grades (language is too mature for a younger audience) but I think it provides an interesting lens of how life is for Indigenous youth today. Obviously, there will be some dramatization for entertainment value but within it, I’m sure there will still be some valuable lessons. What I found interesting is that it combines both the stereotypes and the realities that these Indigenous youth are going through. This format of combining stereotypes with real experiences seems to work well as seen by ABC’s Fresh Off The Boat which follows the childhood of Eddie Huang and his family who immigrated to the USA from Taiwan in the 1990s or CBC’s Kim’s Convenience which follows the Kim Family and their life working as convenience store owners in Toronto.