'Reservation Dogs': FX's Oklahoma comedy shows 'Indigenous people are really funny'

"Reservation Dogs" breaks new ground as the first TV series featuring an all-Indigenous team of writers, directors and series regulars.

It's a noteworthy milestone for a community long neglected onscreen, but it's also central to the authenticity –and especially the humor – of the half-hour FX on Hulu comedy (first two episodes of eight episodes streaming Monday) that follows four engagingly rebellious Native teens. The series was filmed on location on the Muscogee reservation in rural Oklahoma.

"If it was a non-Native-controlled writers room, it wouldn't be as rich with characters or even just the surprising turns in the stories," says Oscar winner Taika Waititi ("Thor: Ragnarok," "What We Do in the Shadows"), a New Zealander of Maori heritage who co-created the series with Sterlin Harjo, a Seminole/Muscogee Creek filmmaker from Holdenville, Oklahoma.

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"Sterlin and I share very similar sensibilities, that we don't want to see ourselves portrayed standing on the mountaintop blowing a flute, talking to a tree, communing with ghosts. We’re sick of that," Waititi says of longtime stereotypes. "I've never seen us represented (as we are) on this show."

Although screen portrayals of Native people have been limited, there has been some progress. Another comedy, "Rutherford Falls," which features an Indigenous co-creator and stars, premiered on the Peacock streaming service in April, while Harjo and "Dogs" director Sydney Freeland are preparing to team up on a Netflix Native American basketball drama, "Rez Ball."

The central premise, which Harjo describes as "these kids who decide to become vigilantes and clean up the community, but in a funny way," came from the co-creators' similar experiences growing up in Oklahoma and New Zealand.

"Communities that have been poor or they're minority communities, it doesn't matter where in the world you're at. You're probably still going to love Bob Marley," Waititi says. "You're probably still going to latch onto American pop culture. We both have kids who grew up loving 'Karate Kid.'"

"Reservation Dogs," a play on Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs," follows teens who spend their days stealing a truckload of snack chips, visiting the local health clinic, strategizing against a quartet of rival teens and yearning to escape to an idealized vision of California. Underneath their antics and byplay, there's sadness over the death a year earlier of their friend Daniel.

Waititi and Harjo drafted Native colleagues to write and direct. They went beyond traditional Hollywood casting sources, in which Indigenous people are poorly represented, to find the young actors who are members of Native communities in the U.S. and Canada.

"What I love about the Native writers room is we weren't policing ourselves, and there was no catching non-Natives up," Harjo says. "We weren't afraid to go places that we needed to go. We weren't holding it back. I was like, 'Let's go hard.' The strength in numbers gave us the power to be able to say what we want."

That allows them to have fun with solemn tropes that others might have been afraid to touch. When one of the teens, Bear Smallhill (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), encounters a spirit warrior in a moment of doubt, it's not a heroic figure, but a comically inept one who died in an accident before he could even get to the fight.

"We wanted to see a warrior from the Little Big Horn battle who was a useless warrior," Waititi says. "No one has seen that."

The series doesn't avoid the historical mistreatment of Indigenous people and the challenges so many still face today, but it concentrates on the rebelliousness, resilience and humor that has helped them survive.

"You have to show the specificities and the nuances of a place. It's not like we're focusing on the sadness, but it's there," Harjo says. "I think that helps the humor come through even more, because we grew up in these communities that are underserved but we still find ways to be funny and have imagination."

Devery Jacobs, a Mohawk actor from Kahnawake, Quebec, who plays teen Elora Danan, seconds that sentiment.

"Growing up on the Rez, I didn't think every day about how my people have endured hardships. I was like, 'Oh yeah, that's part of our history.' It's just a fact of life for us," " Jacobs says. "What I'm so happy for, in this being a comedy, is that it shows that we are three-dimensional people, and Indigenous people are really funny."

Jacobs, who also appeared in "Rutherford Falls," has a message for fellow Indigenous viewers.

"I hope that they relish seeing this community represented onscreen. I can't even imagine what it would have done for me and my self-esteem growing up if I had seen a show like this on air," she says. "I look forward to seeing elders, people my age, youths growing up take it in and really celebrate with us."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: FX on Hulu's 'Reservation Dogs' features Indigenous writers, actors