While looking up Indigenous representation in pop culture, I came across a TV drama called Sovereign. It is a family drama that is being developed at NBC, a major network television company in the USA.
“Sovereign chronicles the lives, loves, and loyalties of an Indigenous family struggling to control the future of their tribe against outside forces and themselves.” (Scott, 2021)
The show will be produced by Ava DuVernay (directed Disney’s: A Wrinkle in Time) and Bird Runningwater who is of the Cheyenne and Mescalero Apache Nations. The story will be written by Sydney Freeland, a transgender Navajo filmmaker, and Shaz Bennett.
This show will provide a more accurate and positive representation of Indigenous Peoples as it is produced and written by people coming from an Indigenous background. The fact that it is a family drama will also mean that the issues the show deals with will be more serious and impactful to the audience. Also, being on NBC means that presumably there will be a wider audience as NBC is part of broadcast television where most consumers with cable packages will have access to the channel. There is no release date for the show yet but they are working on a pilot episode and if it is deemed successful, it will become greenlit with more episodes.
Reference
Scott, D. (2020, December 4). Native American TV Drama – ‘Sovereign’ – To Air On NBC. The Seminole Tribune. https://seminoletribune.org/