Native Culture Rules the Funny, Charming and Ironic ‘Reservation Dogs’
Scott Huver “Native humor can be dark and raunchy — and it’s weird,” says Tazbah Chavez, a writer, producer and director on “Reservation Dogs,” the off-kilter show that follows Native teenagers navigating their community in rural Oklahoma. The quirky, often bittersweet series is both goofy and sublime, and the comedy-drama’s first season has already garnered two Independent Spirit Awards, a Peabody Award, a Gotham Award, an American Film Institute Award and Television Academy Honors. Created by writer-director Sterlin Harjo, a Seminole and Muscogee Creek filmmaker from Oklahoma, and New Zealand-born filmmaker Taika Waititi, the pair of friends share an interest in mining their respective Indigenous cultures for funny, moving stories. Executive producer Garrett Basch understood their friendship dynamic and nuanced cultural backgrounds well, playing an instrumental role in the development of the series and encouraging the co-creators to take “Reservation Dogs” where they believed it needed to go. “The reason the show is successful is that we were trusted and allowed to go as far and hard as we needed to,” says Harjo.