By George Wang, Emily Passfield, and Sam Chipera
Mohawk journalist Kelly Boutsalis released an article discussing her interest in the Netflix children’s series. Boutsalis uses her own lived experiences to represent her hopefulness for the show and her kids. The series represents an all-Indigenous writers’ room, and much of the crew are Indigenous.
To begin, a major ethics discussion point of this case is how Boutsalis takes a certain subjectivity to the article, and reports from a view from somewhere. She places an emphasis on her own childhood to underscore the importance of the Netflix series. She writes, “when I was growing up, I didn’t see a single Saturday morning cartoon that reflected me. From The Flintstones to Inspector Gadget, my cartoon entertainment was silly and fantastical but never rooted in my reality.”2
Boutsalis is a fan of the show and what it represents, emphasized by using her perspective to illuminate the hopeful future the show holds for her kids.
Media scholars Callison and Young write, “Indigenous journalists have land and peoples, locating themselves and their stories within historical structures and relations and drawing on Indigenous knowledges and expertise.”3 In this sense, Boutsalis uses her experience to justify its viewership to her own kids, as it places an important emphasis on Indigenous representation.
Secondly, another ethical consideration involves ideas of resilience and resurgence within the show. Positionality within culture, age, identity, and culture play a critical role in the series. Rebecca Nagle explains, “Invisibility is the modern form of racism against Native people…the research shows that the lack of exposure to realistic, contemporary, and humanizing portrayals of Native people creates a deep and stubborn unconscious bias in the non-Native mind.”4
The show writers place a particular emphasis on not just employing resiliency by incorporating Indigenous beliefs, concepts, and practices, but by also revealing elements of contemporary representations.
Boutsalis emphasizes how the father in the show wears a long braid, while the older brother has short hair, and the youngest brother has a small braid.5 As Boutsalis writes, “This was a reflection of real life where boys proudly wear their hair long — until, that is, they become school age.”6 Showrunner Valencia mentions similarly explains that kids often cut off their braid(s) to conform. The Skycedar family plays a role in fighting invisibility, as the showrunner and writers place an emphasis on a variety of hairstyles, eye colours and skin tones.7
The show also allows non-Indigenous children to learn new perspectives that were not readily represented even a year ago. As seen through National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, some steps are being made in efforts to compensate for previous and current injustices faced by Indigenous Peoples through fair and accurate media representation, though this does not compensate for the tragedies that have already and still occur.
Discussion Questions
- How should shows that represent and involve Indigenous Peoples be supported by companies like Netflix?
- How should Netflix and other streaming services better ensure proper representation of Indigenous Peoples and cultures? What are the ethical considerations in doing so?
Endnotes
1 Kelly Boutsalis, “why I’m excited my kids can finally see playful Indigenous representation in Netflix’s Spirit Rangers, “ CBC, accessed on November 8th, 2022, https://www.cbc.ca/arts/why-i-m-excited-my-kids-can-finally-see-playful-indigenous-representation-in-netflix-s-spirit-rangers-1.6613724
2 Kelly Boutsalis, “why I’m excited my kids can finally see playful Indigenous representation in Netflix’s Spirit Rangers.”
3 Candis Callison, and Mary Lynn Young. “Chapter 6: Indigenous Journalisms.” In Reckoning: Journalism’s Limits and Possibilities, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 161.
4 Callison and Young, 163, 164.
5 Kelly Boutsalis, “why I’m excited my kids can finally see playful Indigenous representation in Netflix’s Spirit Rangers.”
6 Kelly Boutsalis, “why I’m excited my kids can finally see playful Indigenous representation in Netflix’s Spirit Rangers.”
7 Kelly Boutsalis, “why I’m excited my kids can finally see playful Indigenous representation in Netflix’s Spirit Rangers.”