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Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm MHP, back with more on The Takeaway. Reservation Dogs recently finished its second season and got picked up for a third by FX and Hulu. Here's how Shea Vassar, a film and television critic and citizen of Cherokee Nation, described it last year.

Shea Vassar: Four Indigenous teenagers in a small town in Oklahoma are just getting into shenanigan, some legal, some illegal, and their hope is to get enough money to make it out to California to escape this small community and make it into the big sunny world of California.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Co-created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi, all of the stars, writers, and directors of the show are Indigenous. Waititi spoke with Jimmy Kimmel about it last year.

Taika Waititi: I think the most interesting and unique thing about this is that it's the [chuckles] first time that anyone's done this, and it only took just over 600 years. It's groundbreaking in that sense in that I think Indigenous people have always seen themselves as the mystical character who sits on a mountaintop speaking to the spirits. I don't know anyone like that. I'm probably the only person like that.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now back when the show premiered last August, I spoke with Shea Vassar about what stood out to her when she watched Reservation Dogs and who might be the intended audience for the show.

Shea Vassar: It's probably for teenagers as well as adults. They curse, they're a little rugged, but that's also part of the Indigenous teenage experience. It is very coming of age, especially because the four teenagers seem to vary in the point that they're at during their teenage years where you have Cheese who is the youngest, I would assume maybe 13, 14, 15, more in that realm, and he's just pure innocence compared to say Willie Jack who might be younger, but she is tough. She is able to climb up and steal copper wire, hijack cars. It really varies in the age, which makes it so unique.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, of course, not all Indigenous people live on reservation. Folks live in multiple different settings, and I know that there can be critiques around this. Talk to me a little bit about the reservation aspect of this narrative.

Shea Vassar: One thing that is very specific to the Oklahoma experience is this idea, especially when it comes to the five tribes, which are going to be the Muscogee Nation, Choctaw Nation, Seminole Nation, Cherokee Nation, and Chickasaw Nation, those tribes for so long were not thought to have a "reservation." However, the Supreme Court recently, as of just last year, reaffirmed with the McGirt versus Oklahoma decision that these reservations that were supposedly disestablished during statehood were actually never completely gone. Now, obviously, like you said, not all native people live on reservations, and some of that is due to other government systems like the Relocation Act. The goal of that was to move native people from states like Oklahoma and send them to places like California, Seattle, some of these more urban areas. I know that even my community here, we are so excited for Reservation Dogs because it looks like something we know. It does capture a certain Indigenous experience that even if you weren't, say, born and raised on a reservation, majority of people know what that is pointing at and what that life is like.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Shea, I love the ways that you're capturing for us the multiple complexities of representation. Talk to me a little bit here about Sterlin Harjo who is a co-creator, and what did Sterlin do prior to this show?

Shea Vassar: Sterlin is someone that I followed for a little bit. We've been mutuals on Instagram, and I have friends that also worked on Reservation Dogs. Being from the Tulsa area, I grew up with people that have been cinematographers and extras on his films, his documentaries, or help support him in other ways. I've always been a couple of degrees away from Sterlin Harjo, which I always joke that most Indigenous people in the film world were only two degrees away from Taika Waititi.

The fact that Sterlin and Taika are good friends, it just proves that that is very true. Sterlin has really fought for a place in this industry. He started with comedy with some of the people that are also major parts of Reservation Dogs. Their group was called the 1491s. Their sketches are hilarious. He also was at Sundance in one of their programs for Indigenous creators, and that's actually where he met Taika.

From that, he has created some short films, which he has one that is set in an Indian Health Services waiting room, and it feels very familiar to the second episode of Reservation Dogs. What we see with Reservation Dogs is what Sterlin has worked towards. I am just really happy to see someone that has continued to fight against this idea that native content is not sellable, it's not going to be watched. Now he is proof that that rhetoric was wrong all along.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Can you say just one more word about Taika, and whether or not you think FX would have green-lit the show without Taika's involvement?

Shea Vassar: I think Taika is doing what we hope all allies do, which of course Taika is Indigenous as well but from a whole different part of the world. Taika is, again, someone that has built up a specific area in this industry, a very hard industry to get into. Taika is a pretty big name now. The fact that he is using his privilege and his power in order to create space for other narratives that need to be told is something that I hope continues within the industry.

I know too just because I have talked with Sterlin a little bit, and during a panel that I moderated, Sterlin also mentioned the way that Taika opened that door. Then how Sterlin continued to open that door for other filmmakers and creators, PAs, actors to fill in those spaces in the same way. Lane Factor who plays Cheese on the show, this is his first acting gig and he is so perfect for the role. He's incredible. He might actually be my favorite of the rez dogs, the main four, but I don't like picking favorites.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Right. It also ends up, if you pick favorites, you also pick fights with your readers. [chuckles]

Shea Vassar: Exactly, and especially because all four capture different personality you might know in a native community so I love that. Also, we have like Tazbah Chavez who she got to direct her first episode of television. She was a writer on Ruthford Falls. She's done her own work. She has a beautiful short film about her experiences having a native name in carpool situations like Uber and Lyft and the conversations that has sparked.

To be able to see these connections in the way that more opportunities are being opened, it's like a waterfall effect. Taika opened the door, Sterlin continued to open the door, and now that's going to continue to ripple throughout specifically the Indigenous filmmaking community because that is something that is very specific to-- Even though there is a large and diverse group of cultures among Indigenous people, something that I've always found in common is that we are about community rather than the individual, and so this is just the practice of that.

Melissa Harris-Perry: That was Shea Vassar, film and television critic and citizen of Cherokee Nation.

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