How 'Reservation Dogs' sparked a Native filmmaking boom in Tulsa

Tim’s Midtown Diner in Tulsa, Oklahoma, used to be just the local greasy spoon where I could get a big waffle and a hot coffee any day of the week. But since appearing on FX’s Peabody Award–winning series Reservation Dogs, it’s become a bit of a pilgrimage spot. (FX and National Geographic Partners are part of The Walt Disney Company.) In one memorable scene, actors Ethan Hawke and Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs (Mohawk) sit across from each other at a table a few feet from where I was dining. “It brings a lot of people in,” my server said of the show.

Co-created by the Tulsa-based showrunner Sterlin Harjo (Muscogee, Seminole) and Oscar-winning filmmaker Taika Waititi (Māori), “Rez Dogs” tells the story of four Indigenous teenagers coming of age on a reservation in northeast Oklahoma. After a local red-carpet premiere, the series debuted in August 2021, and then suddenly on my TV screen there were Native kids I could have hung out with in high school, in a neighborhood that could be the one outside my window. It was authentic and heartfelt and a world away from the stereotypical depiction of Natives living in tipis and riding horseback. Rez Dogs proved that Native stories told by Native storytellers could succeed on a pop-culture scale: Two months later my social feeds were filled with images of kids and teenagers dressed up as the show’s characters for Halloween.

Most significant, the series sparked a Native filmmaking boom, centered in Tulsa. Fittingly, the city sits at the meeting point of three nations—Cherokee, Muscogee, and Osage. The show’s three seasons showcase Oklahoma’s varied landscapes, from the green Ozark hills and the rivers that flow throughout the Cherokee Nation’s 7,000 square miles, to the prairies in the central region, to the Great Salt Plains in the north and the mesas near the panhandle. Okmulgee, the Muscogee Nation capital, stood in for the teens’ fictional hometown of Okern.

Then there is Tulsa itself, a metropolis of more than a million people, with an art deco skyline that dates back to the early 1900s when the city was known as the “oil capital of the world.” Some downtown locations subbed for Los Angeles in Rez Dogs. They also show up in the Martin Scorsese epic Killers of the Flower Moon, which was largely filmed nearby on the Osage Nation Reservation.

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Harjo employed local crew, many of them inexperienced at the time. He also inspired other Indigenous creatives to come to town, including writer-director Erica Tremblay (Seneca-Cayuga), who filmed the Sundance favorite Fancy Dance throughout the area with actor Lily Gladstone (NiMíiPuu, Siksikaitsitapi). Gladstone, who was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Killers of the Flower Moon, also appeared in Rez Dogs.

In 2022, seeing an opportunity, my tribe, the Cherokee Nation, became the first in the United States to launch a film incentive program. The initiative provides financial backing for the use of Indigenous cast and crew, as well as film locations on the reservation. That same year, Cherokee Film opened a 27,000-square-foot studio on the reservation in Owasso, less than 15 minutes from Tulsa International Airport. The soundstage, sitting off the side of a highway, is a converted indoor soccer facility. A second soundstage, spanning 10,000 square feet, is being built next door. In two years, the tribe has invested more than $10 million in its film office and incentive program.

Cherokee Film maintains an online database of Native talent and crew with more than 2,000 verified listings. Among them is local Cherokee filmmaker Jeremy Charles, who operates Pursuit Films, a production services provider for local shoots and for tribes across the continent.

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The Cherokee Film studio offers motion capture, mixed reality, and 3D capabilities. “There is no technology like this in the region, much less available to Native filmmakers,” Charles says. “Working as a Native in the industry, I really feel fortunate that Cherokee Film is leading the way for Indian Country.”

There are more projects on the horizon. Choctaw filmmaker Kyle Kauwika Harris, who earned numerous awards in 2017 for his Standing Rock documentary, I Stand: The Guardians of Water, filmed the crime drama Out of Exile here in 2021, with support from Pursuit Films. Harris and Pursuit will team up again for the action thriller Huntsman, set to film in Oklahoma this summer. And soon Harjo and Hawke will reunite to shoot a pilot for FX, the Tulsa noir The Sensitive Kind.

These days, I’m often detoured around film sets as I drive around town. Once, I had to go elsewhere for a cup of coffee so Sylvester Stallone could be filmed sipping an espresso for the Paramount+ series Tulsa King. Another time, I had to reroute through downtown because the actor Jesse Plemons was pretending to escort a criminal out of a building for Killers of the Flower Moon.

“Tulsa used to be a ghost town for creatives, and now look at us: Everyone wants to come here and be a part of it,” Charles says. “The talent is clearly here. You can fully book an entire movie with 100 percent Native talent. We’ve come a long way. Now we have to do the work.”

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