Reservation Dogs Review

 

Rez Dog review 2/4/24

                If you like jigsaw puzzles and jagged beautiful truth, Rez Dogs. Me do.

                Rez Dogs, a 3 yr.-and-done tv series, ½ hr. short stories, many can stand alone. It was challenging to place who, what, when, where, why with RD. When it was first getting some buzz, I checked it, but me and HULU don’t often agree. So that.  I finally found an episode, turns out it was the first one, and a few minutes of a frowning teen and then some spirit warrior dude – huh? I moved on.

                Things changed. I finally sprang for a year of New Yorker, and late one night turned the page to find this: On Television CLOSE TO HOME – Reckoning with history on “Reservation Dogs.” By Inkoo Kang.

                Good read, ok, I’ll give RD another chance. Damn Hulu to hell that I wasn’t able to see the whole story from the beginning in sequence. Sometimes it self-advances and sometimes it jumps to next episode after 2 min. with current selection. So, I jumped around RD, and well, challenging for same reasons.

Who? What? When? Where? Why? Who’s cousin/nephew/uncle? Those two women are sisters but treat each other cold? “After Cookie died…” on and on. Get used to it, we follow Daniel’s suicide all through the series. But I was warming up, and for good reason. It’s good! It’s funny! It’s deep! It’s harsh! It’s wise! It’s original!

                I realized the only way to properly place the cast was to start from the beginning, oh sure, can you hear Hulu laughing? I bet it hears my vast swear vocabulary. F’n a. Shitasses.

                On top of that tec challenge, was this: I can barely relate to teens in 2020+, that, and these teens live on a reservation in Oklahoma. Really, well, tv real. Reservation has common regular houses, yards, streets, garages? Is Okern real? What to trust as real, what is BS, should I root for these young thieves? I do like what Kang said, these teens treat sex as a foreign object. It does make the narrative look a bit innocent, is this supposed to be a kid rated thing? But old school me, loves pot like Brownie, so that, too. Here’s an episode I think can stand alone even if you know nothing about that who-what stuff. S 1 E 3 ~ ~ Uncle Brownie. LOL!

                Then the American Indian narrative. What do I know about that? Mostly nothing, I have little trust in my very limited understanding of anything American Indian.

Except this. I still send Leonard Peltier a Christmas card every year. Yes, he’s still in federal prison on taxpayer $$$, I’ll never forgive Bill Clinton for not signing the Executive Clemency papers for Leonard that were on his desk the week he left the White House. Me and millions worldwide believed – I believe – Leonard did not kill 2 undercover FBI guys, but J. Edgar found Leonard’s fingerprints on the car? Surrre… Here’s Leonard’s address:

Leonard Peltier

89637-132

USP Coleman 1

P.O. Box 1033

Coleman, FL   33521

White paper, white envelope, no labels, no stickers, only postal stamp permitted.

 

                Ah, Robert Redford’s film of Leonard’s case, Incident at Oglala. Check it.

                And yes, it was reported that had Clinton signed the papers, it would then be up to Peltier to agree and sign papers of his guilt. He was NOT guilty, so that would have been a horrible thing x 1000.

                It’s long story of how I came to follow Leonard’s hard path. Probably started along the way as I had a subscription to a newspaper from a tribe, maybe Mohawk?, in New York somewhere 60 or so years ago. They worked hard to see Leonard’s case in bright light. Somewhere along the way, I came to know a tiny bit about the American Indian Movement - AIM’s work, it was noble to me, still is.

Do you know what got AIM started? They were sick of what was happening near reservations, the white locals could kill a drunk Indian and maybe get a night in jail.  Because of J. Edgar’s hatred of any Red person he couldn’t easily surveil, AIM finally came to this - non-violence or non-existence. I’m no spokesperson for them, I hope this doesn’t rattle or offend them in any way.

If you’ve read David Grann’s book, Killers of the Flower Moon, he goes deep about how the new fbi top guy, a young guy who had been a librarian bureaucrat at the Library of Congress got the job in the Justice Department, J. Edgar knew how to file info. And what Grann points out in detail, J. Edgar and his new crew did a small bit of work on the murders, but they closed their work long before all the Indian murders were properly investigated. Years later AIM came to be, so J. Edgar could do some dirty work, who would investigate him? He had Presidents by the short hairs, he was the heavy power behind the curtain.

The film? All about the love between the Osage woman and the white guy? That’s Scorsese’s take, not mine. That ain’t love, Scorsese. Well, love of $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Painting her as a cheerful victim is sickening. Scorsese tells on the Stephen Colbert show, 1/25/24, how he heard a granddaughter of the white guy go on about how they loved each other. She’s welcome to see it that way, I don’t call that love. He loved her wealth. Kill anybody in the way. Methinks Scorsese was taken as was Molly. Maybe those eyebrows blocked truth?

                Oh, well, you ready for a waaaaay wild episode? Try S 3 E 5 – House Made of Bongs.  AIM gets a tiny nod of respect in there! Yeah! Previously, we meet the folks as elders, now meet them as teens out partying after school. Windowpane. They party hard. Quite the filming there! And YIKES, the alien thing - - yeah, the standard alien naked dude. But the graphics folks had at it, that space ship! Yes!

                I am thankful the Nyer article by Inkoo Kang got me warm to RD, and yet I don’t agree with every point he makes. I am not missing more hang time with the kids, nope. Didactic? No, no. The interspersing of elders, their back stories, some of their reality, their choices, yeah, I want more of the big picture. No, the narrative doesn't flow easy, gaps and pot holes along the way.

The teens were getting a bit much. Except Cheese! And Willie Jack! Those two became my joy to follow. And OMG, seeing Cheese get taken by police to young adult men’s jail “home” was so hard to watch. I think I stopped breathing in parts. That’s S 2 E 7 – Stay Gold Cheesy Boy. So so so sad to tell you a few years ago young guy was killed right here in my ‘zoo at a “home” for throwing pieces of his sandwich. Dead.

                Want to see the hardest truth? Check this one: S 3 E 3 – Deer Lady. I think it is softer than the reality, but it’s not soft at all. Truth is, yeah, the Catholic nuns were horrible, but they must have had a contract with the US government for the work. This mess is real, really real. At the end of the episode, we are prompted to check

boardingschoolhealing.org

to learn more. Their research now tells of 523 “schools” in the USA. Thank you, RD creators for this. No wonder you got the Time Magazine best television show of 2023 honor.

                Truth, I like Deer Lady. My kind of gal. I had that thought years ago…

I heard a while back that a social worker could take a kid from his/her grandma’s home THAT day if there was no running water in that house. Grandma could work around the water thing, had all her life, everybody was healthy, but that was a no-go for US govt. folks. Grrrrrrrr. And other elders, sitting watching, did nothing. They knew they had NO power to match the US Govt. Kid gone, gone. Social workers the bad guys? Just functionaries for the US policy of crushing anything American Indian. As pissed as I am about how we dealt with Blacks in slavery, this American Indian genocide was much more horrible. Our early whites were greedy bastards. Now we see young American Indians, often mixed race, trying to bring this hard truth to our eyes. Thank You.

Do you know what was a great job for white men in USA 1830’s? Guess.

Well, limit it to young men who could do some math and read, that. No real education needed. Nope. Just sign up for that school in the new state, Indiana, and learn to be a surveyor! Really! Hard work, you walk the land, mile by mile, record any weird stuff like water or forest or that weird black stuff oozing out of the rocks, and measure every inch of land! Sell it!!!!! Wetlands? No problem, it’ll sell. Early USA was all about selling land, measuring land, making the whole thing OFFICIAL. Wanna be a surveyor? Check that guy in New Harmony, Indiana, David Dale Owen, he’s got a surveyor school ready! I mean, after all, his dad bought the town! All that land is ours to sell!!! Well, shit, his dad bought 20,000 acres and a whole town from some weird German religious people, they bought it from some white govt guy. Oh, well, after they kicked the American Indians out. Tippecanoe, and Tyler, too.

                In case you don’t think that Indian Boarding School was such a bad place, here’s this.

Ever hear of Chowchilla? It’s a small town in California, and in 1976 a bus load of young kids were kidnapped by some stupid rich guys who got themselves into big debt and figured out this way to make fast money. Really. No, the kids were not physically harmed, but totally terrified for hours and hours. They escaped their underground prison, and for many many many years they had severe nightmares and very tense lives from the terror, some even had panic attacks when the elderly men were released from long prison time. Now, finally, good thinking, about how kids adjust or don’t, is understood. Turns out young people don’t have resources to handle such as an adult might. Check CNN for the doc. Now add US Indian Boarding School…

                I want to return to good stuff, how about the wide cast of characters? The short men? I warmed to their lively personas; they often added some happy to the heavy. Whew! I grew to respect Big, as it seemed at first that he was a fool, but no, he’s got heart and knows how to make a good difference to the people he cares for while wearing a cop badge.

The spirits! Ok, I can suspend reality, let tv have at it, ok. I only imagine that perhaps this is part of some experience that some American Indians really have. Yeah? No? Or only in tv land? There’s a LOL short bit on this, S 3 E 7, as Rita chats with a unprofessional psychiatrist over her experience of seeing a spirit. Thanks RD, I needed that! LOL! It took me a while to put together Brownie the elder with Brownie the teen. Excellent!

Best quote from Bucky, S 3 E 5 - “How beautiful to never search for who you are. Everything you need is here, in the millenniums of certainty living in your mirror.”   If you’re a full blood, I guess.

                I also liked very much the photography, the way the light is captured, the gentle open space to help heal, and A+ with the scene of Bear and Danny, S 2 E 3, on the roof, that sun/cloud phenom thing was wonderful.

                Somehow I don’t think this is a honest look at young teens in America now, 2020+. They don’t sneak booze from someone’s family shelf? They don’t smoke pot? Nobody’s smoking cigs? They clearly aren’t having teen-love-sex, and some of them are barely supervised by any adult.  That aspect of the narrative gets thin. But they have cell phones, so that replaces drugs/sex? Just sayin… Yet the arc of the series is interesting, often fun, sometimes serious heavy, always worth my 30 minutes. I recommend Hulu ad free thing.

                Curious, we meet Elora’s dad, S 3 E 9, and he tells her he’s from a long line of Quakers. Huh? I hung with Quakers for years, and yeah, maybe one might have been like that dad, but slim chance. Quakers are wrapped tight, methinks that dad doesn’t align with Quaker values. If he wasn’t still in the fold, why would he “brag” about the association? Kinda lame.

Can Leonard Peltier see RD in federal prison? Can we find out what he thinks of RD? THAT would be interesting. Dude’s been in prison for – 40 years or more, damn, could it be over 50? I did hold tiny hope that Chump would let Leonard go home, it would piss off the fbi, and Chump was into that. Did you know that the fbi staged a street protest in front of the White House when Clinton was considering signing the Executive Clemency papers for Leonard? Clinton caved.

                Want to see some bling fun? Check S 1 E 4 – they had a ball filming that opening! Sometimes losers can rock!

                So, how to speak of such folks? Native Americans? First Nations? Indians? No. Try this:

NOTE:    per Dennis Zotigh, cultural specialist with National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian  - -  he gives “American Indian” as preferred term - - he also gives several other examples of how various indigenous cultures prefer theirs, such as in Canada, the large diverse varying tribes agree to common usage “First Nations.”

Can you handle some virtual violence? I’m thinkin’ the film crew had too much fun with this one! S 3 E 6 - - what a surprise opening!

                I well understand they didn’t create RD for my old white woman enjoyment, they most likely are aiming at American Indian viewers. Respect. I’m deeply impressed with the work, the American Indian cast and crew, and wish them well for what’s ahead. Maybe a look at AIM folks as teens? I’m such a dreamer. And I have backstrap in my freezer!