Episode 3: Native American narratives
Listen to the episode here:
Resources about Native American narrative change:
IllumiNative: The New Native Narrative - A Guide for Entertainment Professionals
Finding Hollywood’s ‘New Way’: Native Traditions Can Inspire a New Power Structure
Check out Maya’s work here:
Read the transcript here:
Maya Dittloff: [00:00:02] I never saw myself reflected on screen, but I think almost more importantly, I think I never saw the way that I thought reflected on screen. I didn't grow up wanting to be a writer. I think I had always been a big reader. But knowing that Hollywood and entertainment had gotten it wrong for so long was definitely like a disincentive towards the work that I innately was drawn towards.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:00:34] You're listening to The Other Story, a podcast about the stories we live by. Each episode, we'll examine a dominant narrative in our society and ask how it came to be, how it might be changed, and the role the entertainment industry has played in reinforcing or deconstructing it. I'm your host, Jennifer Gottesfeld. There are nearly 600 sovereign tribal nations across every state in the United States, and yet we refer to them all as if they're one homogenous group, Native Americans. And while there are over five million indigenous Americans, that's 5.7% of the U.S. population, they're depicted in pop culture less than 0.4% Of the time, and when they are, it's often content created by non-native people. Today, we'll be talking with Maya Rose Dittloff about the essential role of narrative sovereignty and narrative change and the growing world of indigenous cinema as a response to that need. We'll try to better understand how to identify and deconstruct these pervasive, dominant narratives, the new narratives movement leaders like Maya introducing and how Hollywood has played a role in perpetuating and challenging these narratives. Maya Rose Dittloff or in Blackfeet, Many Pipes Woman, is a Blackfeet, Mandan, and Hidatsa writer and director from the mountains of Montana. As a queer BIPOC woman, Maya uses her creative pursuits to fuse truth and form to reveal new perspectives. Today, she works to broaden indigenous inclusion in the entertainment industry through her involvement with the young entertainment activist junior board and as a writer for Free The Work. Maya, It's so wonderful to be talking with you today.
Maya Dittloff: [00:02:27] Hello Jenn. Thank you for having me.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:02:29] Yeah. So I like to get started by first exploring what some of the dominant narratives are so that we can understand where they came from and how to deconstruct them. So I'd love to start our conversation today talking about what are some of the current dominant narratives around and about Indigenous Americans and how have those narratives influenced the way the community is understood and treated?
Maya Dittloff: [00:02:55] Definitely. So there are a number of kind of dominant narratives when you're thinking about, kind of, entertainment and representation as a whole, when we all know very well, it's kind of the idea of the drunk Indian that one continues to kind of, you know, hurt native communities. I think there's also the idea of like native women as submissive or easily preyed upon. And I think a lot of what these dominant narratives point towards is kind of the romanticization of the ancient past or what the Wild West once was. And I think that, you know, you're talking about a time of like cowboys and Indians and a return to kind of this really idyllic past that no longer exists, but for some reason, for the representation of natives. A lot of what we see in 2021 is still kind of this idea as natives, as a relic of the past, when we are a living, breathing people that have adopted, you know, modern ways and times and have found beautiful ways to really kind of infuse our culture and heritage, but still be on the Internet. And still, you know, I open final draft in the morning like any other writer. And I think that a lot of that kind of translation is lost. And I think a lot of it also comes back to kind of this idea of like mysticism, I think, of course, we've all heard like, oh, you know, that place has to be haunted. It's on an Indian burial ground. You know, the idea of like shamans, this is all been warped as according to kind of the dominant perspective, which is really kind of like a white colonizers perspective in America in the idea that, yeah, I mean, Indian burial ground is so funny to me because in essence, this whole country is of Indian burial ground, like this land was once all of our land. And I think that idea is lost on a lot of people.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:04:54] Yeah, totally. So I'd love to dig into a little bit more understanding why those narratives exist and where they came from and how they were originated.
Maya Dittloff: [00:05:10] Definitely. From my own tribal history a lot of this points back to simply the idea of starvation. When you're talking about kind of the history of most tribes in the United States, you're talking about relocation in the movement towards the reservation system, specifically for the Blackfeet. And I culturally grew up in Montana as mostly Blackfeet. So I'll speak to that one right now. Um, we in the winter of 1888 have what we call "starvation winter." Our old modes of hunting and gathering were outlawed to us and we weren't allowed to leave the confines of our reservation. Thankfully, the Blackfeet Indian Reservation is on its ancestral homelands. However, the city was allocated by the BIA, which is the Bureau of Indian Affairs, in a very windy, desolate part of the reservation. And you had to go into town to kind of get your commodities to get your food. But of course, that was mismanaged. That was coming through the federal government and you were only given so much so like a ton of people died simply by starvation because we weren't allowed to eat buffalo anymore, which we've done for hundreds and hundreds of years. So I think when you're kind of talking about, like dominant narratives, it's this idea of kind of forced poverty, I think. What I hear a lot from very well intentioned people are like, oh, you know what, like I was driving through the Navajo reservation and that was so sad.
Maya Dittloff: [00:06:50] There was so much poverty. And that always rubs me kind of the wrong way. Like, yes, you know, people are struggling. No, there is not a lot of money on reservations. That's just a fact. But it also remains that, you know, for me and my tribe, for the Blackfeet on our ancestral homeland, there's a lot of. You know, that's our home at the same time. So for someone to come in and say, oh my God, they're so poor, that's so sad is like a natural reaction from a lot of people. But there is still so much history ties to the land and kind of like a bountiful wealth that people don't quite understand. So when you're talking about like, oh, a drunk Indian, you've got to understand, like, the sheer amount that was taken away from us. And I think the idea that, like, trauma is something we're still grappling with. One of the big things I say a lot is that Native Americans have lived through our own apocalypse. So we're really kind of living in the after times. Our world was upended in that kind of idea as natives, as resilient. Yes. But kind of living in their own version of the future is something I think deeply about. And I think everyone else just has to catch up.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:08:09] Yeah, that's really interesting. Something as I been preparing to have this conversation with you that came up that I thought was very interesting, was this sort of both positive and negative associations of of Native Americans where there's these sort of like cognitive dissonance beliefs. So you were talking about like this conceptualization of poverty, but at the same time, this association with casino money and like other things that came up in this report that I was reading, the new the New Native Narrative, similarly with alcohol, like there's there's this cognitive dissonance that I think white people are an unformed people have is like their spirituality and then also the alcohol or drugs. It's just like it's interesting to see the, like, unbelievable dissonance between these two conflicting views and how pervasive it is that people can just sort of hold those two views without questioning them. And I'm curious how you've experienced that or seen that manifest when you've been looking at and dealing with narratives, particularly, obviously, by people who are are not are not Native Americans.
Maya Dittloff: [00:09:30] I am glad you kind of brought up the idea of casinos, because that's one that's never registered to me in life as. Like like, for example, when I was in college, people really think that, like I went to college for free, that I kind of had the support of, like the federal government or that I don't pay taxes. These are all kind of like myths that are very enduring about native people. But none of it is true. I have never. Had to concretely think about casino money in my life, I think it's just something that people really latch on to. And I think, you know, living in Los Angeles now, kind of like if you're making the drive out to Las Vegas and you see the San Manuel Casino like you understand, like, oh, they must be doing well. That's a really big casino. And like, thank God, because there's also just like so few California natives, I don't think people in Los Angeles are in the entertainment industry. Understand also that by the time colonizers got to California, because as one of the states on the western coast, the order was just to shoot natives on sight. I don't think people know that. So the idea that there are any California natives that still live is like, absolutely amazing. So, like, yeah, please. Like, I would like that they have money and can survive. That would be great. I think this idea of like adapting to new times I think is something that. Is an integral to kind of the survival of any community. But. I'm super perplexed as to how sometimes these, like, you know, dominant narratives become absolutely so pervasive in people. Again, like you said, don't pause to think about that.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:11:21] So, you know, the history of cinema has not valued authenticity, and I know you talk about how Hollywood has defined the American Indian and what that's meant in terms of what what folks have been forced to reckon with. And so I'm curious now to dive in a little bit into the role Hollywood has played in perpetuating these narratives. And you mentioned at the beginning sort of the cowboy and Indian sort of narrative. And I think that's an interesting place to start. I'm curious, curious what your what your experience with that has been
Maya Dittloff: [00:12:02] Definitely a first. I would love to just spend a beat on. I know you had kind of, you know, verbally underlaying kind of like American Indian as a term. I think that's a conversation also worth having. American Indian is a very kind of old term. Academics use it and organizations that were started prior to like the 1970s. These days, people are going to lean towards indigenous. They're going to be accepting of native or Native American. But the best thing, if you know someone's tribe is always to name their tribe. So I think that's also kind of important in kind of this podcast to understand this idea of sovereignty and what that actually means and what terms to be using. And a lot of times people that's their first question to me. So with that out of the way, I think if you're digging into the history of Hollywood and if you're kind of going back even pre Hollywood and the idea as film as a medium as created in New York, Thomas Edison created a series of one rules, and that was really the birth of the moving image. As a part of that, Thomas Edison is really obsessed with the idea of Wild West shows. So he had kind of fallen in line with some of the big names of the time and helped kind of produce what he was marketing as like true and authentic, like Indian dances. And as a part of that, the go to dance comes to mind. And it's just, you know, he kind of, you know, got some natives in the studio, told them to dance. They were in some form of dress.
Maya Dittloff: [00:13:51] And that kind of help perpetuate this not fear, but also for lack of a better term, like mysticism of the West, when in reality the ghost dance had caused. A bunch of deaths like it caused mass panic, and yet here Thomas Edison was cataloguing it for his one year from there. You've got the movement towards Hollywood and this is where it gets super interesting. So Thomas Ince had a village of natives that lived on the, you know, in Seville a lot. And they were called the interval Indians. I believe that is what is now the Sony studio. And so there was literally just like an encampment, like some tepees where he was like, yeah, those are like, you know, we have them come in for when we filmed the Westerns and Westerns blew up, of course, with kind of recent history, Westerns were extremely kind of prolific in film and TV. You've got people like D.W. Griffith's also kind of perpetuating these myths against Native Americans. Of course, I don't have to speak on absolutely how racist he was, but also kind of these bigger names like Cecil B. DeMille, like everyone was a part of this kind of movement and kind of putting natives on screen. And what's super interesting is that first real natives, which I think is a really funny term that's thrown around a lot, makes me feel like I'm a real boy, like from Pinocchio. I like people were actually kind of going to kind of tribal communities and putting them in films that started to go away as the genre became more and more popular and they were replaced by big name stars.
Maya Dittloff: [00:15:41] You know, Audrey Hepburn comes to mind. I mean, we know these films. We know that they're playing Red Face. So that became a very kind of dominant, um, you know, narrative storytelling device. You know, natives were always kidnapping children and women. They were always attacking trains, you know. We are we all know what that looks like, and I think things start to change in the 70s, in the 1970s historically. Tribes were able to practice their traditional religions again, it had been outlawed prior to that, and there's some movement kind of off the back of the civil rights movement and you've got figures rising like the American Indian movement and degrowth towards what actually, you know, it means to be native. And there was also no tribal specificity prior to this time. It was very much the idea of the Pan Indian, like we'll put a headband on them and they'll be in, you know, a plane's buckskin dress, but they'll have, you know, Apache moccasins on. I think it's the idea that, you know, no one was doing their research. No one cared to no one wanted to be asking questions. And, you know, I. Never saw myself reflected on screen, but I think almost more importantly, I think I never saw the way that I thought reflected on screen. I didn't grow up wanting to be a writer. I think I had always been a big reader, but knowing that Hollywood and entertainment had gotten it wrong for so long was definitely like a disincentive towards the work that I innately was drawn towards.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:17:37] That actually is a great, great segway into what I wanted to dig in now, which was really your experience and and how these narratives have manifested in your lived experience, both in, you know, what you just described as not seeing any part of yourself really represented in in media and pop culture, but also in other ways. You may have experienced these these narratives in your daily life and how it's affected you personally.
Maya Dittloff: [00:18:09] Yeah, so I grew up a voracious reader, and I was always doing, you know, one of three things. I was either reading a book at theatre rehearsals or I was outside hiking. And when I was outside hiking, I always had a camera in my hands. Um, I like to think that I was very fortunate in how I grew up because I was able to kind of. Really know, like the back of my hand. Not only kind of like, you know, my ancestral homelands and what is Glacier National Park, but also really kind of steeped in just like what I fully think is like the most beautiful place in the United States. So I'm very grateful for that. In addition, in being black and Mandan, Hidatsa and going to public schools in the United States. I really kind of grew up with these four different set of stories of mythos. And I saw that those stories constituted the kind of imagined areas of these different, you know, cultures and societies. So I was always kind of in tune with, OK, these stories shape who we are. And I knew that very much. So, um, it wasn't until making the choice to go to college that I kind of confronted. What had always kind of been within me, I think I was told via standardized tests that I was not a good writer and I wasn't like awful at them or anything like that.
Maya Dittloff: [00:19:40] But I just always wanted to be an overachiever. And if I wasn't getting, like, the 99 percentile wasn't good enough. So and I was doing better in math than I wasn't writing. And I am absolutely not a mathematician. So I wrote that life off but still chose to go to film school. And while I was there, it really was. A time in which I had to kind of, you know, get the bad scripts out, get those bad stories out, and by the time I left in the time and years since kind of writing my way back, back in time back to Montana and kind of reimagining and reinventing a future that I would rather see, I love working and kind of the space of like, you know, speculative fiction. I love being able to kind of, you know, implement traditional stories and new and exciting ways. I think I never thought of time as linear. And I think, you know, growing up native and it's a fact that, like, you know, I was exposed to different traumatic events as a young child that like trauma of phishers, the way that you think of time and you're always looking for those puzzle pieces, you're always looking to make those connections and connect the dots.
Maya Dittloff: [00:21:00] So I always thought of time as a very valuable thing. And I think those are some things that, you know, had you told me at age 17 when I was deciding what I wanted to do with my life that I would not have remotely had on my radar, let alone know that could be like a virtue to me as a writer. So I think these are all you know, it's a learning experience, and I think indigenous cinema in the United States is still finding out what it wants to be. Like you said, there's a lot of different tribes, there's a lot of different communities, but we're all kind of born storytellers. So it's a true testament to the fact that there are not more natives in the industry, that these barriers are huge. They're absolutely just innately should be more natives in the industry because we were born to do it. Like, if I can do it, like, that's not you know, I am not anything special. Everyone should, if they're given the tools, be able to do this kind of thing. So I think that's, you know, the accessibility of it all is something I think deeply about as well.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:22:03] The some language that actually I learned from you, never narrative sovereignty, I'd love to start thinking now about going from sort of the history of of why these old dominant narratives have persisted and sort of looking to the future. I know you're thinking a lot about what is it look like to deconstruct some of these narratives. And so I'd love to now sort of dive into that that part of this work around changing narratives and what you're what you're working on, what you're hoping to see and how that looks right now.
Maya Dittloff: [00:22:41] Definitely. So this idea of like, you know, narrative sovereignty is far from my idea that's coming off of the backs of kind of, you know, other marginalized communities. And it's a fact that united the United States is decades behind in terms of indigenous representation. Countries with public media funds like New Zealand, like Australia, like Canada, there's at least opportunities for indigenous people to get funding dollars to make something. And, of course, you know, these systems are not perfect, you know, but we've seen incredible success stories also coming out of these places take away taenias. I mean, obviously, you know, a household name. And I think, you know, every everyone loves Taika. So I think I was like the golden child. That's what we absolutely all aspire to. But for narrative sovereignty and I believe this term is coming off, the work of disability activists is, you know, nothing about us without us. And I think that's, of course, an incredibly important motto whenever you're considering, you know, any any material risk or about marginalized communities. And I think that's a two pronged issue, you know, in the writing room and in production and production as it faces its own ethics and morals. But I think kind of the idea of narrative sovereignty is that we be in charge of our stories. I think, again, the idea of having never seen myself reflected on screen. People were always just getting so horribly wrong that, like I have left the theater, like physically ill because I was like, oh my gosh, like, um, you know, I know they were trying to do good by native communities, but they missed the mark so horribly.
Maya Dittloff: [00:24:42] Like I saw The Revenant in the Cinerama Dome and they had to leave. I was like, so sick. I was like, oh, my God. Like and it was just because people see statistics and they say, oh my gosh, that's so sad. Or like, oh my gosh, that's shocking. How can I put that in a story? So the idea that, you know, I think it's three or four native women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. They're like, oh, my God, that's crazy. How can I help? And they think helping is putting that in the script. They think that's putting that in the story when in reality, that's just really traumatizing, you know, native people in need of women. So I think that's the idea that, like, you know, you have to have somebody with that lived experience and that's its own credit, that should be considered of its own merit in order to truthfully and authentically get that right. And the exciting thing for kind of, you know, execs and gatekeepers and decision makers is that the truth is so much better, like it's actually so much more interesting and engaging and intriguing. And I am so excited kind of walking forward and there's such amazing work being done, you know, across the world. But in the United States, for kind of these narratives that have been kind of steeped in a very sad, depressing history to kind of find new legs and really kind of grow and blossom.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:26:05] That's that's really interesting in terms of some of those new narratives that are growing legs, what are what are some of those what do they look like right now?
Maya Dittloff: [00:26:17] Yeah, well, I think there's some amazing space being done with people that are working in the comedy space. I think it's a fact that Natives are some of the funniest people you'll ever meet. And that's applicable across tribes. I think, you know, for any people that have, like, you know, say such horrible things, you can either laugh or cry about it. And I know that there is a book that came out recently compiled by Cliff Nesterov called We Have a Little Real Estate Problem. And it's a compilation of, you know, different, you know, essays and sets by, you know, Native comedians, which is so much fun. I think the idea that, like, we're coming to a place where we can laugh about it, that's that's a signifier that like we're healing as a community. And the idea of that, like, you know, once we can laugh about it, once we can talk about it, like what comes next, I think I'm really. I think we've seen and even from, you know, native artists and, you know, myself included, the idea that, like, you know, our our trauma can define the stories we tell because it is such a big part of our lived experience that's just like an undeniable fact. But finding new ways to approach that and to approach the question of like, who am I in new and exciting ways, because that differs for native communities. The idea of self and your relations to your community and to place is also so exciting and finding ways to intermingle really what it means to have like an indigenous ways of knowing. And how do you represent that on screen?
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:27:59] We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're really going to dig into Hollywood's role in all of this. So one of the things I wanted to come back to that you brought up a little earlier was these sort of two areas, the writers room and production as to places where Hollywood has a lot of work to do. And so I'm curious. What changes you're seeing happening, how some of that work has already begun, and what what has your experience been in working on that narrative change and pushing some of those those things that need to be changed forward?
Maya Dittloff: [00:28:39] Definitely, um, so I think there's some congruous movements that definitely kind of aid in this topic, I think you can't talk about how you're native without talking about your relationship to the land. So therefore, of course, things like climate change and is like a very important issue. And the idea that, like, you know, sets are incredibly wasteful places like they're just undeniably just like bad for the environment is definitely kind of one thing that like, you know. The industry has to grapple with not only in terms of kind of like, you know, indigenous filmmaking, but, you know, so that we can continue living as a whole. So that's definitely kind of one aspect of it. But also the idea that you. So, of course, backing up, there is some. Like a very long history of exploitation of native communities and I think. That includes the idea that, like, you come to a place, you shoot a movie for four to five weeks and then you leave. That is not necessarily helpful. That's like that's dipping into a place, seeing, you know, what can I skim off the top of this? And then I'm going to go edit my movie about it. I think that idea of how do you actually truthfully and authentically engage with communities is something that non-native filmmakers haven't grappled with just yet, because those relationships take years, if not lifetimes to build. It is a slow game, and that's just the way native communities work. Like, you know, we function on, you know, Indian time, like for Blackfeet, like we don't have necessarily like times of day, like the sun is out, the sun is out. So I think it's just this idea that. You know, a lot of times non-native creators or, you know, people in production just don't know how to approach.
Maya Dittloff: [00:30:54] And how to engage ethically and then I think in terms of the writers room on the other side of things, of course, kind of it's paramount to be having natives in the room. And I think there's been an amazing movement in the past couple of years going beyond just native consultants. I think really kind of truthfully engaging in and sculpting new native talent is the social moment that we're in and acknowledging. I, like I said earlier, that lived experience should be valued as a credit of its own and that it's not quite something that we understand or we put in our IMDB page, but that that's undeniably sculpting what they bring to the table, which is true of any writers room. That's, you know, the staff meeting. The showrunner meeting is you know what? What do you have to offer? What can you bring to the table? Um. But I think that's for all marginalized communities, I think we're in the moment of how do we help support people that are in their first 10 years of, you know, being in the industry. It's incredibly lonely. I will say that I think, you know, I come from like it's a pretty small community, like, you know, generally neighbors in the industry, like I could take someone who could text someone and I could get to anybody that way. So I think that, you know, having more gatekeepers and decision makers of color is also incredibly important. And I think that. I am so happy that in the time that I've been operating in this industry and living in Los Angeles, I have seen a transformation even just in that.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:32:45] Could you talk a little bit more about that transformation?
Maya Dittloff: [00:32:49] Yeah, I think it's just definitely at the like I was the only Native at my film school. I would had to do the whole internship gambit. But as a part of that, like, you know, I do not come from money, so I could not take unpaid internships. I got incredibly lucky because people saw that I was continually working and still making and producing good things and was able to find my footing very serendipitously. But I think nevertheless, when you're when you're meeting with execs, when you're meeting new people. My my name is on my resume, so they'll see that, like meyerrose Detlor and then the translation of my name and. So it's a question in any interview. And whenever I meet someone new, like, oh, wow, you're native, like you're the first one I've ever met. That's so cool. But then the conversation stops there. And I think it's also No. One I mean, no one I have come into contact with wants to do wrong. And I appreciate that so greatly. I know that there are people that are out there that I'm afraid to meet. But so far, everyone I've met is absolutely wants to do the right thing.
Maya Dittloff: [00:34:03] And there's a lot of fear surrounding. You know, not asking the right question. And truly, truly, the public education system has failed us. I grew up in Montana, which is one of like a small, small handful of states that has a state mandate on indigenous education. And I still say it was still really bad. And there's still just honestly so much work to be done. So I think that's one of the biggest steps is being conversational in issues. That go beyond just like, oh, wow, that's cool. I think that's always so appreciated and it's so apparent to me on the other side about like who's who's done their homework or who's done the work of kind of educating themselves, because unfortunately, we did not get that growing up. But there's a lot of really amazing social movements going on in Indian country. There's a lot of, you know, change makers that are doing such great things that I think it's really easy to educate yourself and to seek that out should you choose to do so online.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:35:14] Speaking of your own experience in the writer's room as a writer, I'm curious. I'm just curious of your experiences, you know, you spoke about how you found yourself often being the only native person in the room and and and what responsibility that's meant for you. What what conflict you may have come up against because of that. And just what. Yeah. What that experience has been like for you.
Maya Dittloff: [00:35:42] Definitely. I'm very thankful in that, you know, in my professional experience for projects in which I was cut a check, I have been well treated and that people kind of really value my voice. I think it becomes very it's very apparent when people are looking for, you know, a native writer as a token piece or they're not valuing their their voice or they're not going out of their way to include, you know, indigenous people. Like, it's very clear when like, you know, it's being thought of as like a line item to check off in order to fill that diversity quota. You're not fooling anyone, but at the same time, people need projects. So, like, I fully understand this is like a very kind of complicated issue. Um, and I consider myself so fortunate, you know, a feature that I'm on right now, like Sherd, like I didn't get paid a lot. It's a small indie movie who did get paid a lot. But I was really kind of had a lot of ideas that were really taken seriously that were not discounted, that I was valued as an equal team member despite being a younger writer. So I think that's one thing that I'm very fortunate. But I still look forward to the day when, like, you know, I get to work with other writers and like native writers in the room. I think, um. There is no one way to be indigenous, and I think that's so exciting and I think the idea that, like, yeah, I've got my little experience, but like I grew up in, like along the Rocky Mountain front, like I'm a plains native, like I know that experience and that there's definitely crossover in that mindset in that ways of thinking. But, you know, I certainly am not a spokesperson. I think I can only truly understand, like, how I grew up. And I think that that's also so exciting because, again, there's so much room for growth.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:37:42] What what are some of the movies or who are some of the people who you feel like are getting it right or good models for what's your the your ideal future starts to look like?
Maya Dittloff: [00:37:55] Yeah, the goal for me is to write and direct features and always be working in TV. I love story in any way that the characters tell me to write it. So I think that's what it comes back to. And I grew up acting, so that'll always be first and foremost writing as a duty to my actors. And I think that right now written this incredible place where there's a lot of things set up or filming and I'm excited to see them come out. I know that Retherford Falls is going to come out on peacocke that had, you know, a writers room with a bunch of natives writing like how exciting and make sure and tell our ownerless as kind of the first, you know, female native showrunner. Like, that's undeniably amazing and it looks great. So I think that's what's exciting is that like, you know, we can go beyond diversity and inclusion as, again, line items or quotas to fill and actually make great content. I think that's super exciting. Same with kind of artifacts stolen. HIJOS reservation dogs are set up. And, you know, I know folks working on that and it's just a great time to be indigenous because finally these things are starting to get green, that finally people are starting to see the worth in this.
Maya Dittloff: [00:39:23] I think it's a really common misconception that like, oh, you're Native, you make Native content. Oh, that's so nesh. When no, that's just absolutely not the case. Like, I was watching the first season of Outlander and I was like, oh, my God, ike, this is about land disputes in Scotland. Like, I also don't like the British. How exciting. I think it's just these identities like crossover. And I think just because I am native and native content doesn't mean I can't do anything else. I just think that there's people don't know that there's such amazing broadening out of kind of what it means to be indigenous, for example. And this is beyond film and TV. But there is a Kickstarter campaign for a tabletop role playing game called Coyote and Crow. And their initial kind of goal was to make eighteen thousand dollars. They just passed a million dollars. So there's like a real and absolute need for, like, you know, these forward facing narratives. And that's, you know, the next wave. And I think the next five years will be so, so exciting.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:40:33] That's really awesome. Are there are there things that you're worried about or that you're mindful of that you're sort of clocking as far as things change and the movement grows and changes?
Maya Dittloff: [00:40:49] Definitely. I think the idea of, again, ethical production is super important as these series and things start getting greenlit. We have to define what that means. And in places like Canada, they have as a country defined what it means to have an indigenous production. And of course, they've got the indigenous screen office, so they have a body dedicated to taking care of natives in the entertainment industry and like, wow, I wish we could have that, but I think. Finding a way to, you know, truthfully and authentically use stories to bring social change, not just narrative change, of course, no change is important. That's the ethos of this whole talk. But, of course, that like, you know, these stories that we tell go out into society. How are we telling them? And doing things in a good way is something that, you know, I was taught by my elders growing up and going in with a good heart. But also I have had my voice run over in TV projects. I have been purposefully excluded by the system on projects that I was with for years. So I think the bureaucracy of it all is also a little worrisome because natives are a little looser with the rules. So I think that there also has to be some amount of building back up the entertainment industry in a way that makes it feel fundamentally different. I think that the idea that only so few can make it in this forced scarcity is not something that is appealing to native communities. I don't think that's a line of thought that is engaging. I don't meet people and they're like, oh, man, I want to be rich like that. Like, I think that, you know, that's not ever like necessarily people like the natives are telling stories to bring change. And I think that's also. It'll be interesting kind of in the next five years to see, you know, what gets made, what gets done right, what we can learn from, and then in the decade after that kind of really concretely, you know, and have like a thriving indigenous cinema scene, like, I think that would be so cool.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:43:26] Yeah. I am so grateful that you brought up sort of the narrative change vs. social change. I think that's something that's so important because the reason for narrative changes is not an end in of itself. It's what it is sort of engender is because of that change. I'm curious why social changes you want to see from from the narrative changes that's being worked on now?
Maya Dittloff: [00:43:53] Yeah. So kind of like the top four issues facing Indian country right now are tribal sovereignty. Yes. As a continual attack by the federal government. Suicide is an epidemic across Indian country. MMW or Sansbury missing and murdered indigenous women. It's like these are all issues that, you know. Each and every native has had to face and grapple with on some level, myself included, and I think it's just. The idea that natives have been left out of the conversation for so long that we have been purposefully excluded and erased. Is just a fact. So I think when you're talking about kind of what does real social change look like, I think you're seeing someone that looks like you on screen is great. That'll offer you some modicum of hope. And I think that's what's important in this conversation, is this idea that you can use stories to kind of say like, oh, man, like I don't have to suffer. I think the idea of native identity as what comes after suffering, how do we heal? Like, that's what's important and that's what stories help us to do. And also as a tool of like preservation, I think as a recording medium, there is so much that we can preserve for future generations at the same time. And so grateful to kind of also have grown up with, you know, stories told to me from my elders. And that is a natural translation to film that as a historical document that can be helpful for kind of how do we adapt to modern times? Like, I think that's also incredibly important.
Maya Dittloff: [00:45:57] So I think there's it's a big question. There's a lot of factors in this. But, of course, kind of like that first step is kind of the reckoning. It's having that conversation. It's it's being honest and then we can move towards reparations. And I think that's kind of the limbo zone that we're currently in, is how do we grapple with what America did to this community? And that's applicable tornadoes in the U.S., African-Americans. This is just like, you know, what comes next and the, you know, moment that is 20, twenty and twenty twenty one. And what the version with the versity and inclusion on everyone's mind, what does this actually look like in terms of not just fellowships? Those are great. I'm so happy that those exist. Yes, but that can't be where we stop. We've got to keep going. And this is kind of got to be a retooling of a system that was built to exclude us. So I think the idea of dismantling those pieces that were targeted as exploitation. Is also super important, and that's just when it comes down to it's like how do we make this industry more accessible? And that applies to production. That applies to storytelling. And I. And, you know, with with digital cameras, let's do it like there's like the tools we have, the tools, that's undeniable. Now it just becomes sharing dollars and equity capital.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:47:36] Yeah, dollars equity and capital. That's decolonizing. That will be a huge, huge hurdle in all of this all of this work. So I'm curious for for folks who are who are listening. What role can they play in helping to deconstruct some of the narratives that, you know, I think have been so pervasive, have been so internalized. Like you mentioned earlier, our education system is abysmal at talking about any any native history. I mean, I was reading like almost nothing. Post 1990 is taught in mosts. I'm sorry. The nineteen hundreds was taught as taught in schools, which is like insane. It's always talked about is like a historical relic and and very little is talked about in terms of like the current day context. And so I'm curious what even small tools or things for people to notice as they're living their lives can be helpful in starting to shift these narratives and perceptions.
Maya Dittloff: [00:48:51] Definitely, I think it's a very important question. I think there is a number of things you can be doing, but no one is kind of like building out your own education. This is super funny, but Dan Levy of Schitt's Creek took like an indigenous education course. I think the University of Alberta. And that blew up. And he was like, oh, I'm so glad I got to do this. I was like, oh, good. I mean, I'm glad, you know, in creating content in Canada, like, you know, the First Nations perspective is one that you should know. And the same is applicable here in America. I think there are many ways to be starting that, like, no, maybe you don't have to take a whole course. I understand people are busy. They don't have the time for that. But I think starting off knowing a kind of whose land you're on, like, what are you quite literally occupying here in L.A.? That's the photographer in New York. That's not land. And I think that. That's a step towards acknowledging, but in the past year, we've got a lot of land acknowledgements and I have some complicated feelings around land acknowledgements because I'm glad that your reckoning with the fact that you're occupying this land, but they don't help me at all that like that's not does not have an effect on native communities whatsoever. So there's a lot of interesting kind of movement that's being done here in Seattle. There's a Web site where you can literally like pay rent, and that goes directly towards indigenous communities.
Maya Dittloff: [00:50:33] That's like a super interesting take on kind of how reparations could work. But I think for kind of the entertainment industry as a whole first, like I said earlier, kind of that idea of like education. And, you know, we live in the information age, like that's at your fingertips, like, you know, go follow these people online, go seek them out. I think that's all at your fingertips. I would take, you know, a couple of simple Google searches are searching in your Twitter bar, and then once you follow them, they'll reach many people and it becomes this chain of you're always building, you'll never be, you know, the fully inclusive picture of like, oh, man, like I am the best indigenous ally. Like, you know, I'm still learning like everyone is. So I think it's the idea of giving yourself building blocks so that you have a more concrete understanding. And I think it's also being open to change and understanding that like like an example I used earlier that like, you know, for the black beat, like we didn't have. Days of the week, we didn't have a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, we had today, tomorrow, the next day and then yesterday and the day after that. So you were always in the present. So that's a fundamental difference in how we thought of time. And that's going to be reflected in my stories and my scripts a little differently, as I think the idea also that, you know, characters that's going to look a little different.
Maya Dittloff: [00:52:18] Everyone's talking about what's their goal, what do they want? And I've been asked that a ton. I mean, that's question number one when you walk into a pitch room or what do they want? And it took me a while to kind of grapple with this because first and foremost, a lot of native characters just want to survive. Surviving is something that we don't think of as difficult in kind of, you know, United States. But it is you've got to find where you are going to sleep. You got to find food. You've got to make sure that you're safe. And if you're thinking Maslow's hierarchy of needs, that gets changed in an indigenous perspective. So I think it's in a way that this has been kind of explained to exactly. And I think has been received well, is that a lot of times indigenous characters are also in the pursuit of self actualization. And that means, you know, if my family is good, if my community is good, then I can think about who I am and what I want. So it's like more like a concentric circle instead of a pyramid. So I think that's just a reframing also that is useful to have in mind when you're talking about and looking for an uplifting native voices, because that's what's important is leverage.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:53:38] I really love that reframing of the concentric circles to the to the hierarchy, which, yeah, it feels like such a paternalistic way of looking at things as as that that hierarchical pyramid. That's a really that's really beautiful. So to come to a close in this conversation, I'm really I'm so appreciative of your time and and thoughtfulness in and everything that you've shared is there. Is there anything you'd like to say that I didn't ask to to leave the listeners with as we as we wrap up today?
Maya Dittloff: [00:54:21] Hmmm, I think I definitely got the broad swath of it out, I think walking away from the conversation, I think I'd really just want people to know undeniably that, you know, these stories aren't being told, not because they don't exist, but because they're not finding you and your desk. So rethinking about how you look for material or what writers you engage with is what's incredibly important. And I think that being open to new translations of old stories, I think I'm so grateful because I've always thought of a history from a different perspective. And thankfully for one, that's being received well in the industry in that that's an asset. Um, so I think that's what it comes down to, is that, you know, these people are out there, but you have to find them and there's tools that will help you.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:55:27] Amazing. Well, thank you so much. How can folks find you?
Maya Dittloff: [00:55:37] I have a website site. It's mayarosedittloff.com
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:55:43] Awesome. Well, thank you. Thank you again so much. My I really. I really learned a lot from our conversation, and, yeah, we left a lot of things to continue to think about and work on for myself and I imagine anyone listening as well. Thanks for tuning in and join us next time on The Other Story.