‘Reservation Dogs’ Uses 1970s Horror Motifs to Tell the Cruel History of Native Boarding Schools
variety.comMichael Schneider Variety Editor at Large In what may be one of the most powerful and stirring episodes of the entire run of FX’s “Reservation Dogs,” the series this week took on the horror of assimilation “Indian boarding schools” — and attempt by the government in the 19th and 20th centuries to erase Native culture from the country.
It’s another dark chapter that is well known by most people with Indigenous heritage, but something that most non-Natives have either never heard about, or only have a passing knowledge of it.
For “Reservation Dogs” co-creator Sterlin Harjo, there was a responsibility to tell the story right. “We have an opportunity to tell some truths, and that’s what the show has been about — telling the truth about who we are,” Harjo says. “I just wanted to make something that represented that experience, to show people what the reality was.
To show people how it must have felt, to show people what it felt like sitting in those cafeterias and having people yell at you for speaking your language.
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