There’s a revolution taking place in Hollywood, and Zahn McClarnon is on the forefront. The Hunkpapa Lakota actor, who has starred in tv hits together with Westworld and Reservation Canine, not too long ago completed his first season of one more fashionable sequence, Darkish Winds, the place he isn’t solely the star but additionally the chief producer.
To say that McClarnon is altering the narrative of onscreen Native illustration could be an understatement.
“I believe we’re in a reasonably distinctive time proper now for illustration, and individuals are lastly listening to our tales,” McClarnon says throughout an interview for Yahoo’s . “We’ve our personal storytellers, and we’re writing our personal tales, and we’ve got our personal administrators and we’re getting showrunners and producers now. So there’s been fairly a giant flip in Native illustration in TV and movie in the previous few years.”
In the case of Indigenous illustration on the massive and small screens, the numbers have been notably stark. In actual fact, for movie, Native folks stay underrepresented, touchdown lower than 1% of the share of prime roles, in addition to director and author positions, in response to UCLA’s 2022 , which lined the highest 200 movies launched theatrically and on main streamers in 2021.
For TV, the numbers are solely barely larger. Native illustration grew from the earlier 12 months and accounted for two% of broadcast scripted roles, however lower than 1% on cable and digital, , which lined the 2020-21 season.
That makes McClarnon’s work on Darkish Winds particularly significant. The 56-year-old actor/producer stars as Joe Leaphorn, a Navajo detective fixing crimes on the Navajo Nation. Whereas the present is predicated on novels written by non-Native writer Tony Hillerman, McClarnon, as an govt producer, insisted on casting Native actors in addition to writers, administrators and crew.
“What we’re doing and making an attempt to do is herald Native writers to come back at it from a little bit of a special perspective, extra from a Native perspective,” McClarnon says.
Which means centering the Native storylines and even utilizing the Navajo language within the script.
In any case, shining a highlight on the Native perspective comes after years of dangerous onscreen stereotypes and even erasure. That’s one thing McClarnon is working to fight.
“We grew up with these stereotypes and these tropes about Native People,” he says, “and the general public is studying that we’re not all on horseback and yipping and yelling in buckskin, and that we’re human beings, that we’re three-dimensional characters.”
McClarnon himself has proven that multi-dimensional vary via his characters. Whereas his tribal police position on Reservation Canine leans extra towards laughs, his Darkish Winds detective and sci-fi position as Akecheta on Westworld have extra gravitas.
All of that goes to indicate why the actor-producer says that “telling our personal tales” is essential. That, and extra illustration within the boardroom, too.
“Getting extra folks on the studio degree and extra producers is the subsequent hurdle,” he provides. “And the extra we get Native illustration in these positions, the higher off we’re gonna be.”
The tide appears to be turning, as Darkish Winds has been renewed for a second season and Reservation Canine, from Indigenous co-creators Taika Waititi and Sterlin Harjo (Seminole/Muscogee), for a 3rd. Not solely that, however the Native-centered Predator prequel, Prey, delivered .
With so many current successes, what does McClarnon hope the longer term appears like for Native illustration in Hollywood?
“What I hope it appears like is that we simply have extra storytellers, extra writers, extra doorways opening up for folks in entrance of the digicam and behind the digicam as properly,” he says. “And I hope that exhibits like Darkish Winds and Reservation Canine and Rutherford Falls and the opposite exhibits which might be in pre-production are gonna be produced, are gonna simply open and crack these doorways even wider for future expertise.”
