Reservation Dogs - Natalie Sharp

 

This show was brilliantly done. I love how it portrays all the joy, love, hardship, and friendship that the characters have. It paints a greater picture than what we usually hear about Native life. Through the lives of these young teenagers growing up there is a lot of the show that is super relatable, they are navigating friendships, parents, new hormones, and that all shine through. However, the show also highlights the extra layers of challenges these teenagers are facing while growing up on a reservation. The medical system is extremely underfunded and understaffed, their only option to make decent money is through theft, most of everyone's parents are separated or dead, and they are all living in poverty. These teens are forced to navigate learning about their culture and how to honor it and then also the reality of living in a place with a lot of dead ends. I hadn’t realized what a tight-knit community life on a reservation would be like. When Cheese goes to the doctor and the receptionist just has to ask who his dad is and she knows him immediately. It was so interesting living in a place where everyone knows everything about everyone. There also seems to be an inherent sense to look after one another. The police, Mr. Big was an important character in looking out for everyone in this community. His character gave me a new perspective on what cops can be for a community. I sort of had no conceptual idea of what life would be like to live on a reservation other than the reality of living in poverty, and this show broadens that depiction in a beautiful way. The show brings in an element of comedy which was something that didn’t initially fit my expectation of life on a reservation, but it was an important element to add. The comedy humanized the hard situations the characters were in and poked fun at Native stereotypes. When the co-creator Sterlin Harjo says that the show “gives us permission to laugh with us” he is saying that he wants people to see the joy and humor Native people can still have while living on a reservation. It does not have to be all serious and bad all the time if fact it is important to laugh and that helps to fully humanize the people in these situations.