WARNING: This story contains disturbing details about residential and boarding schools. If you are feeling triggered, here is a resource list for trauma responses from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition in the U.S. In Canada, the National Indian Residential School Crisis Hotline can be reached at 1-866-925-4419.
Kevin Abourezk
ICT
The cutting of Indian children’s hair. Dousing with lye. Unforgiving nuns and priests. Broken spirits and even dead children. Revenge.
The latest episode of acclaimed TV show “Reservation Dogs” has drawn praise from viewers for its stark depiction of boarding school life with one Native nonprofit official calling it a milestone in the boarding school healing movement.
“I do think that it is a defining moment for how we engage in storytelling around boarding school impacts, not just historically but the continued impacts,” said Samuel Torres, deputy CEO of the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, an organization that seeks to understand and address the trauma created by federal boarding school policies.
The episode, “Deer Lady,” is told through the eyes of a young Kiowa girl who would become the Deer Lady, a modern-day spirit of vengeance who preys upon evil people. This article contains some spoilers for “Reservation Dogs” season three, episode three.
In the first scene depicting the boarding school era, we see terrified children sitting on a bed of hay in a truck bed. They arrive at the school and each is given a haircut before being doused with lye.
The episode is a horror story, replete with angry nuns and priests speaking a language that the Kiowa girl can’t understand. To help viewers experience this, the voices of the nuns and father are muffled and incomprehensible.
At one point, the Kiowa girl speaks her Native language and a nun yells and points at her while another rushes over to slam her face onto a plate of mashed potatoes.
Without giving too much away, the episode details the psychological and physical abuse suffered by Native children at the hands of nuns and priests.
(Related: ‘Reservation Dogs’ launches third — and final — season)
And while other filmmakers have tackled this issue in feature films and TV, few of those filmmakers were Native, a fact not lost on Lainie Maker.
Maker, Osage, is a set costumer for “Reservation Dogs” whose nephew Adam Maker appeared as an extra in the “Deer Lady” episode. The 14-year-old boy was one of the children whose hair was cut.
To prepare the actors and crew for the scene, the show’s co-creator Sterlin Harjo brought in spiritual leaders to sing, pray and burn cedar.
“Sterlin also did a good job in making sure that the set was blessed and had good feelings,” Maker said.
In the scene, Adam Maker’s actual ponytail is severed. His aunt said the scene was emotional for everyone who helped produce it.
“When they finally did cut it, it was heartbreaking,” she said. “It puts you in that place of what it would have been like to see Native kids unwillingly get their hair cut.”
After the scene was finished, Harjo thanked the younger Maker for his sacrifice and shook his hand. Maker’s mother and aunt sat down with him, hugged him and praised him for giving up his ponytails.
“He was just kind of at a loss for words,” Lainie Maker said. “He knew the weight of the scene. He knew that what he had just done couldn’t be taken back.”
She said her nephew allowed his hair to be cut to “represent all the children that were forced to cut their hair and to also represent all of the ones who never made it home.”
She said the episode was especially powerful because it was produced by Native filmmakers and said she hopes it will serve as an educational tool for non-Natives.
“I hope that people realize what our ancestors have been through and what we’ve been through to still be here today,” she said.
Mary Annette Pember, Red Cliff Ojibwe, is working on a book about her family’s history in boarding schools and about how the Catholic Church earned federal funds and lands through its involvement with boarding schools. She said the church’s efforts to assimilate Native children also legitimized the church and gave it a voice in the federal government’s efforts to draft Indian policy.
“They have had really powerful roles in forming United States Indian policy,” Pember said.
She said the “Deer Lady” episode effectively tackled the issue of cultural genocide by the church, especially its efforts to suppress Native languages.
“Our very being was through language, and the focus on that was really effective,” she said.
She said the scenes in which the Native children supported one another mirrored the interviews she’s conducted with boarding school survivors.
“They really gained strength from each other,” she said. “That was really how they were able to survive.”
She offered a few criticisms of the episode, including its portrayal of Native boys and girls sleeping in the same room. That never would’ve happened in a church-run boarding school, she said.
And she offered a critique of the entertainment industry in general. She said it’s unfortunate that mainstream media so rarely addresses the boarding school issue and when it does, it typically fails to explain how boarding schools were merely one weapon in the federal government’s assimilation arsenal. She said mainstream media also fails to explain how non-Natives not directly involved in boarding schools were still complicit in such failed assimilation policies.
But she credited the “Reservation Dogs” filmmakers for their portrayal of how the intergenerational trauma created by boarding schools remains in the very tissue of Native people today.
“That is the way trauma lives in us,” she said. “It touched on that really effectively.”
Pember is a national correspondent for ICT and is taking time off to write her book.
Samuel Torres of the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition said the episode is a “stark reminder of the importance and the urgency of the boarding school healing movement.”
He said he knows of only a few examples of popular media addressing the history of boarding schools, citing as another example the recent TV show “1923,” which also depicts the brutality of boarding school life.
“One of the reasons why there aren’t more is because the United States as a society has just really started to come to terms with this history,” Torres said. “These (shows) can contribute to opening a dialogue to social and even political change.”
Political change soon may be on the horizon.
In June 2021, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, an effort to address the intergenerational trauma caused by Indian boarding school policies. And in May Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts introduced a bill to create a truth and healing commission that would address the impact of boarding schools.
“These are powerful opportunities of social reckoning,” Torres said. ““Now we’re left with the question of what next.”
He said he’s hopeful “Reservation Dogs” will encourage more Native people to get involved in the entertainment industry.
“My hope is that this inspires a whole generation of Indigenous creators to walk in a similar path so we can continue to be inspired to ask those questions that are needed to move in the direction of truth, accountability and healing,” he said.
Our stories are worth telling. Our stories are worth sharing. Our stories are worth your support. Contribute $5 or $10 today to help ICT carry out its critical mission. Sign up for ICT’s free newsletter.