Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Zahn McClarnon, Kiowa Gordon, Jessica Matten, Deanna Allison, Elva Guerra, Natalie Benally, DezBaa’, Ryan Begay, Rainn Wilson, Nicholas Loga, Jeremiah Bitsui, A Martinez, Eugene Brave Rock, John Diehl, Noah Emmerich, Betty Ann Tsosie, Jonathan Adams, Amelia Rico, Rob Tepper, Julian Bonfiglio, Quenton Yazzie, Kate Bergeron, Julianne Frick, Sophie Jane Frick, Ryffin Phoenix, Stafford Douglas, Shawnee Pourier.
One of the greatest insults that we have by proxy of cinema and television delivered on the Native American people is that which in which generations passed looked upon the tribes as the perpetual bad guys of the western invader outlook.
Thankfully amends have taken place with some glorious pieces of cinema and small screen adaptation have come along which, doesn’t say completely ask forgiveness of past portrayal, but goes a long way to showing a various of amounts of truths that return the gravitas of proud and spiritual nations and peoples.
As part of that rightful pressure to bring a truth to a people that were wronged by early visual media, Dark Winds is a drama series that brings together the anger of a mistreated and misplaced people, and places within the narrative a sense of justice and rebellion that is particular to those who defend the law and those seeking to break it but with the reason that it will create the means to improve the standards of those cast aside in early 1970s America.
To highlight the dichotomy of the series, one that does not shy away from the use of spiritualism and myth, of the nature of abandonment, is full of courage. The brutal facts that the Native American people at this time were treated with disdain is undeniable, and by focusing on the freedom that is possible but only through darker means than legal attitudes is an invitation to observe just how far we push the minority out of their own homes, from their own lands in the name of progress/colonisation.
It is the cast, as well as the immense script, that the pinpoint beauty of the piece comes alive, and with Zahn McClarnon, Kiowa Gordon, Jessica Matten and Noah Emmerich all pulling on the decency of the viewer and asking the pertinent questions of the brutalism of life, what the viewer is gifted is a chance to experience is that of empathy, of identification, of understanding that at times we are pushed to take a different route to survive in the world we are placed in.
A gripping drama, one of stirring resolutions and fierce debate as the sun sets on the Navajo Desert and those that live in reservation, reserve and detachment.
Ian D. Hall