Is the show “Reservation Dogs” changing the views of Indigenous people within Pop Culture?

Dr. Bruce Maggi

In a world - yes, world- that looks at caricatures and stereotypes of Native Americans as factual personas, many of us are yearning for movies and shows that modernize the views of the Indigenous people of North America. Growing up in the 1970s, the only characters in TV shows assigned to indigenous people were usually characters set as comic relief (ex. F-Troop) or the solemn no facial expression Indian (ex. Lone Ranger). It was a great surprise when the animated cartoon The Super Friends introduced a Native American superhero (Apache Chief).

Not that the way the character was portrayed did anything to break the stereotypes since he was the only one wearing what Euroamericans believed Native Americans in contemporary times. While all other superheroes got to wear fancy and sleek costumes, Apache Chief got to wear a loin cloth and buckskin vest. Even in different iterations of the character in contemporary shows, we still see him in the same costume style.

Fast forward forty-plus years, and we get a show that takes us on a new path in characterizing a Native American. One of the many things that make “Reservation Dogs” so different is that this is the first show on cable TV in which all the writers, directors, and regular characters in the series are Indigenous. You may wonder how this is possible in the twenty-first century, but it is true. A 2020 Inclusion report from the Writers Guild of America West’s Native American & Indigenous Writers Committee found that 1.1 percent of the 2,400 television writers for the 2019 to 2020 season were Native and Indigenous. Among screenwriters, that figure drops to 0.8 percent among the about 1,800 people who held the jobs.

So is it the fact that so many people who are part of this show being indigenous makes a difference? I would say yes. Allowing cultures to tell their own story and portrayed by actors who have lived those experiences gives a show a reality that is incomparable. Part of the show’s success is that it does away with many of the stereotypes so often assigned to indigenous people and squashes the myth that Native Americans are either extinct or relics of a past time.  

As a fan of this show, which recently had its series finale, I hope others follow in its path. This certainly doesn’t need to be a one-off. Another show that seems to be following suit is Dark Winds. A take on the crime novel is written by and is primarily directed by Native Americans. Almost the whole cast is indigenous, with some of them you would recognize from Reservation Dogs.

I will continue to scour the streaming services to find more shows illuminating the world of the importance and reality of Native Americans, and we can move past these discriminatory stereotypes.