‘Reservation Dogs’ Uses 1970s Horror Motifs to Tell the Cruel History of Native Boarding Schools
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In what may be one of the most powerful and stirring episodes of the entire run of FX’s “Reservation Dogs,” the series this week took on the horror of assimilation “Indian boarding schools” — and attempt by the government in the 19th and 20th centuries to erase Native culture from the country.
It’s another dark chapter that is well known by most people with Indigenous heritage, but something that most non-Natives have either never heard about, or only have a passing knowledge of it. For “Reservation Dogs” co-creator Sterlin Harjo, there was a responsibility to tell the story right.
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“We have an opportunity to tell some truths, and that’s what the show has been about — telling the truth about who we are,” Harjo says. “I just wanted to make something that represented that experience, to show people what the reality was. To show people how it must have felt, to show people what it felt like sitting in those cafeterias and having people yell at you for speaking your language. We all have family that went through this. All of our uncles, all of our grandmas and grandpas. These stories were told to us in a very matter of fact way and that’s how I wanted to tell this story. Instead of reading it in a history book, I wanted to put it in this way so you could understand what it might feel like… reminding people that these were young kids that were abused and sometimes killed.”
In the episode, “Deer Lady,” Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) is continuing on his journey back home, having missed the bus that carried the rest of his friends back to Oklahoma. At a diner, he encounters the Deer Lady (Kaniehtiio Horn), a spirit who at first frightens him. But she’s not there to harm Bear; she’s on a mission to carry out justice on one of the boarding school guards, now an elderly man, who caused her and others so much pain in childhood.
In flashbacks, the Native kids are seen being forced into the school, while not understanding what their captors are saying in English. Harjo says he was inspired by 1970s horror film motifs to set up the scenes. Danis Goulet, who directed the episode, says reading the script “hits you with so much force, what the episode is about and what happens in it.
“We made the decision to kind of lean into a genre lens with this particular episode,” she says. “There’s something specific about the way a lot of ‘70s horror movies feel. They have this kind of intense realism mixed in with something fantastical. One of the things I thought about when I was reading it was ‘Don’t look Now.’ And then we ultimately as a reference kind of settled upon the reboot of ‘Suspiria,’ because it’s set in this institution.”
Language is also important in the episode, starting with the fact that in the flashback, the young Native characters don’t understand the English that their captors are speaking. To help viewers experience that, the show was inspired by the trombone-wailing teachers that we never actually understood in those Charlie Brown “Peanuts” specials.
“That’s actually what Sterlin had written into the script,” Goulet says. “Because the gibberish is there in the script, and he said, ‘It’s like the Charlie Brown teachers but scarier.’”
Adds Harjo: “These are kids not hearing, not understanding the language of these people are speaking and being really afraid.”
Meanwhile, because it’s a period piece, the young Native kids are speaking the endangered Kiowa language (of which there are currently only 20 Native speakers left, according to most reports). Georgeanne Growingthunder, who plays young Deer Lady, comes from a Kiowa family and had already been learning the language, Goulet says. “That was just like an added gift, that we found this incredibly talented and captivating young woman who also had a ground in the language,” she says. “It felt like it was pure strike of lightning in a bottle.”
Meanwhile, Michael Podemski-Bedard, the young actor who plays Koda in the flashbacks, is the son of Jennifer Podemski, who plays the mother of Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis) on the show.
A language consultant was also on hand to help the young actors with the Kiowa language. “Michael, who isn’t Kiowa, he did those beautifully in a language that was completely foreign. And I was just so proud of them,” Goulet says. “The first take that they did in the language, it was just such an emotional moment. Because the boarding schools, one of the first things they did was take our languages away from us by teaching kids to speak only English and punishing them if they didn’t. That language contains so much richness and worldview and universes and poetry. To hear children speaking it was just so beautiful. It was like we were a part of this process that was connecting back to the thing that happened.”
Having family on set was important, Harjo and Goulet say, while dealing with such difficult subjects and supporting the young cast at the heart of the episode’s story.
“We have the responsibility of needing to also make these kids, the actors, feel safe,” Harjo says. “So, the parents were all there. We had spiritual leaders there and people there to sing songs and also, just to make sure everyone felt safe and have people to talk to if they needed to. We take it very seriously. But also take the truth of it seriously. And want to tell it as truthful as we could. For our grandmas and aunts and uncles and grandparents and everyone that went through that. Some are still around and some still have all of those memories because it wasn’t long ago.”
Back in the modern storyline, Deer Lady finds the old boarding school guard’s house, and eventually kills him.
“This act in particular, I will say that this is a part of what makes Sterlin’s writing so brilliant is even the depictions of violence never feel like they’re there for their own sake,” Goulet says. “It felt intense, for sure. But Tiio Horn, who plays Deer Lady, was just so remarkable in those sequences. The emotions that she tapped into, the complexity of the layers, of feeling all of the things that you would feel in a moment like that. Suddenly this powerful, captivating, charming character is rendered almost helpless when she goes to face this monster that she spent her life looking for.
“And then when she goes into the room,” Goulet adds. “Normally she’s the one in power. The person who’s going to right a wrong. But I really wanted to shoot it in that way of, from her perspective, she is approaching a monster. And what do you do in the presence of a monster and what are all the emotions coming up?”
At first, Goulet planned to zoom in on Deer Lady as she did the act. But ultimately, “when we shot the close up, it’s like you couldn’t take your eyes off of what was happening in her eyes. It was so powerful and so arresting. And then the moment she walks out, it’s like she goes from being broken to having this moment of realization that some kind of justice has happened.”
Harjo and Goulet say it was important to include some sense of justice in the end. “All I can really say is that, showing something like this and telling the story is so important,” Harjo says. “Because the problem is it’s been lied about for so long. There’s no truth about it. So, it can be hard for people to watch and we’re going to have disclaimers for people if they don’t want to watch it. But in the end, it needs to be told.” And that’s exactly what “Reservation Dogs” accomplished.
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