The hidden climate story in Reservation Dogs S1 E6
And its counterpart in real life.
It’s needless to say Reservation Dogs is full of hidden climate stories, f***, the whole thing is a climate story without ever having to use the c-word, because the stories of indigenous communities across the globe are inextricable from our existential predicament. But I want to focus on a specific moment that stood out for me in the “Hunting” episode. This one touched a personal memory then connected to a real-life climate success story I just came across.
✋ Spoilers.
All episodes that put Willie Jack in the center are my jam. In this one, she wakes her father from his slumber to go hunting. Leon drags his foot. He had a spiritual encounter with a Big Foot like creature in the woods he felt was connected to Daniel’s passing, because “everything is connected,” and left him hung up on hunting for a year. The episode weaves a beautiful picture of father-daughter bonding over nature, memories, emotional unloading, and exchange of intergenerational teachings. Here’s the moment I’m getting at with a close-up on Paulina Alexis’ gorgeous performance, oh I just love her whole persona.
In the truck, Leon reminds Willie Jack for the thousandth time:
“Do you swerve if a little animal tries to run out in front of the car?”
“No, you hit it,” Willie Jack grimaces.
“Good,” Leon affirms. “You don’t know how many accidents have been caused by people trying to swerve.”
Willie Jack takes a boiling sip out of her coffee and digests the hopelessness of this teaching.
A teaching that immediately felt like a mutation on the indigenous wisdom. Does this not go against ancestral ways of being in harmony with animal relatives? Is this family practicing and passing on a type of maladaptation to modern life’s necessities, violent vehicles, and ruthless roads?* An earlier episode, perhaps confirms my intuition. Rez Dogs stop to load a fresh road kill in the back of Elora’s grandma’s car. “White people,” they quickly assume would have run over the deer. This shows how they take the teaching “do not swerve” comes from white thinking and not the ancestors.
This moment stuck out to me because I received the exact same teaching from my father while driving cross-country in Türkiye as a teenager, both hands on the wheel, my driver’s license hot off the press. With the same grimace on my face, as a dog crossed the road, I grappled with a picture that goes against things I had learned thus far about what’s right and what’s wrong. Hitting a pup is justified by self-preservation, its rippling consequences are externalized through reasoning. Yet my body could feel there was something out of balance in this equation. What provides safety for our species is glazed with guilt.
In Rez Dogs, this scene passes quickly. The episode moves on to other teachings, Willie Jack’s plans of moving to California where life will be fast, and wide open to possibilities and therefore distractions, so these externalities perhaps will sting less. Leon, tries to convince her daughter to stay, delivers a weak pitch for fun things to do in their small town“eat catfish, ride your bike, walk around and look at things…” But he achieves more by just being, dancing, and crying with his daughter. At the end of the day, a successful hunt converts Willie Jack. The joy of feeding off the land overcomes her temptations to venture away.
Within the same week of watching this Rez Dogs episode, I discovered a counterpart to the show’s recurring deer-crossing plot line. A real-life indigenous-led conservation story.
The newspiece opens with the deadly history of Montana’s Highway 93. This road runs through the Flathead Indian Reservation with one of the highest densities of wildlife crossings in the world leading to many crashes, swerve or not. What’s striking is how The Salish and Kootenai tribes of Montana addressed this problem.
Instead of accepting “you have to keep your hands at ten and two, you never know when an animal’s going to dart out in front of you” as a mantra, they organized to mitigate the problem. They did so by using their sovereignty on land, ancestral knowledge, and grounding values. They stood against the expansion of the highway which would only aggravate the accidents and put wildlife in further peril. They also engaged with local officials, planned and executed road crossings. As a result, they addressed both the preservation of wildlife species and human safety issues. Highway officials captured remarkable footage of deer, bear, mountain lion, and all kinds wildlife frequently using these crossings. The number of accidents dramatically dropped after their introduction.
Salish and Kootenai tribes of Montana turn the learned helplessness of Rez Dog’s fictional characters on its head. They show how real-life Indigenous communities, when consulted and put in charge, can solve seriously complex problems, benefiting both human and animal people.
Reservation Dogs portrays a hilarious and heartening picture of First Nations teenagers navigating their fragmented relationship with their ancestral power, on a quest to escape this stuckness. There’s constant tension with the westbound hero’s journey, and spirits that calls them back home. Season 1 finale “Satvrday” brings the mysterious and direct links between ancestral wisdom and Nature’s power as a tornado approaches town, friends and foes are forced to take shelter together. In Season 2 hidden climate stories thicken. The spirit world seeps into real life in almost every episode. A glow in the sky in “Roofing.” Mabel’s send off with songs and fry bread. A hilarious denouement of “everything is connected” following Big on his quest to solve his mystery case. Deer Lady comes to his rescue to capture a pathetic white cult, an obvious metaphor for greedy men raping the Planet, while yelping “Ours!” And beautifully, in Episode 9 ancestors make their presence with Willie Jack to show ways of healing personal and collective traumas. All hidden climate stories.
As the series arc develops and Season 3 airing now, I am looking forward to what’s coming next on this show and how fiction may find its counterpart in real life.
* I can’t speak for the Native American communities, the way they pass on knowledge, and teachings, what is right and what is wrong for each unique nation that has a unique relationship with the lands and waters they are a part of. I express this thought as a personal, visceral reaction, a question, with wholehearted apologies if I’m stepping off on the wrong foot, and openness to correct my thinking.
