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Erik Tanner\/Netflix<\/p>\n
Cultural consultant Julie O\u2019Keefe grew up in Pawhuska, Okla., the heart of the Osage Nation.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sitting down with brilliant directors, brilliant writers, and I\u2019m handing over pieces of history that they\u2019re like, \u2018How come nobody knows this?\u2019 And the great part is, this is the time in history \u2026 people are really starting to get on top of wanting this for their stories, because it really wasn\u2019t of any importance before.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new Little House on the Prairie, which was shot in Manitoba and has been a Top 10 show on Netflix since it arrived on the streamer earlier this month, takes a wider view than its source material: Laura Ingalls Wilder\u2019s semi-autobiographical series of novels about growing up as a pioneer girl in the American West.<\/p>\n
In the book Little House on the Prairie, the Ingalls family moves from Wisconsin to Kansas and builds their little house on what was actually the Osage Diminished Reserve. This new adaptation includes the perspective of the Osage \u2014 fully fleshed out with rich characters \u2014 whose land was intruded on by settlers who were, it turns out, illegally squatting.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Handout-Netflix \/ The Canadian Press<\/p>\n Actors Alyssa Wapanat\u00e2hk and Meegwun Fairbrother portray White Sun Mitchell and William Mitchell, respectively.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n O\u2019Keefe got involved in the production via costume designer Mitchell Travers, whom she\u2019d met at an Apple luncheon for Jacqueline West, the lead costume designer on Killers of the Flower Moon.<\/p>\n \u201cHe sat across from me at a table and we\u2019d finished talking and he said, \u2018You know I think we\u2019re going to work together someday.\u2019 And at that time, I was thinking, \u2018I\u2019ll never be in this industry again. I don\u2019t know anything about TV and film,\u2019\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n But their moment came three years later: O\u2019Keefe got a text from Travers saying he was working on an adaptation of Little House on the Prairie for Netflix and that he\u2019d given her name to the producers.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then, in big letters, \u2018and I don\u2019t want to do this without you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The later 1860s\/early 1870s, the time period in which Little House is set, is a deeply painful period of history for the Osage, O\u2019Keefe says. They\u2019d already been removed from Missouri to Kansas and faced intense pressure to sign the Drum Creek Treaty, the agreement that led to the tribe\u2019s removal from Kansas to Oklahoma.<\/p>\n The signing of the Drum Creek Treaty is depicted in Episode 7, and the Osage chiefs in that scene are portrayed by real-life Osage elders. Consulting and involving elders is where O\u2019Keefe\u2019s process always begins.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Eric Zachanowich \/ Netflix<\/p>\n From left: Crosby Fitzgerald as Caroline, Luke Bracey as Charles Ingalls, Corvin Mack as Myron, Xander Cole as Little Puma in Little House on the Prairie, which embraces the presence of the Osage in the American West.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you work with any tribe, not just your own nation, but other nations, you want as much feedback and as many voices going into your research to hand over to all the departments that you work with, so that they can use just honest, actionable information that they have no qualms about using,\u201d O\u2019Keefe says. \u201cAnd those elders really surrounded me because they recognized that the story needed to be told.\u201d<\/p>\n The Osage Nation Museum in Pawhuska was also invaluable to her research.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a treasure trove and has pieces from that 1870s period,\u201d she says. \u201cI showed up with two binders and each had about 40 pages in it, which ended up being the bible on the show.\u201d<\/p>\n A lot of people think cultural consultation is limited to costumes, but ideally, it touches every department on a production.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re going in as a consultant, but you\u2019re crossing in everybody\u2019s lanes, and some people don\u2019t like that,\u201d she says with a laugh. \u201cBut so far, I\u2019ve been very fortunate.\u201d<\/p>\n Her approach to the work is collaborative.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m the one that comes in with the director, with the writers after the script is done, and then I go through and say, OK, let\u2019s do it this way together. I need to know your vision. You tell me what you want for this scene, and then I\u2019m going to go out and find it.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Eric Zachanowich\/Netflix<\/p>\n Wren Zhawenim Gotts (left) as Good Eagle, Alice Halsey as Laura Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n In addition to the Osage Nation Museum, O\u2019Keefe was able to access the archives of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., where she sat on the council, as well as draw upon other connections she\u2019s made. \u201cI brought in Lainie Maker, who\u2019s another Osage woman from my district in Pawhuska, and she came and did a lot of the ribbon work and background work (on costumes) with Mitchell (Travers).\u201d<\/p>\n If she can\u2019t find something, she\u2019ll find someone who can.<\/p>\n \u201cI call universities with different professors that may be in Native studies for a particular area, and I start pulling everything I can \u2014 for costume, weaponry, regular word research from books, the set and what would it look like,\u201d says O\u2019Keefe, who also has a vast network of Indigenous artisans across the U.S. she can tap into from her days as an Indigenous art consultant.<\/p>\n \u201cThe artists are always the ones telling the stories. They\u2019re doing the research for their art,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then I bring in the cultural people for the show to be on set, which usually they\u2019re leaving their real jobs and their families to come sit on a set, which is hard to find, but they will come.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery nation is set up differently, so there\u2019s no pat way of doing this.\u201d<\/p>\n Ojibwa actor Meegwun Fairbrother, who plays William Mitchell, a mixed-blood Osage man whose family\u2019s story is told alongside the Ingalls\u2019, relished the collaborative process in fleshing out his character, from how he looks \u2014 \u201cwe found this picture of the son of an Osage chief, and he had this interesting slick-back hair with kind of a fauxhawk in the back. We loved that picture and thought, \u2018That\u2019s the one\u2019\u201d \u2014 to how he speaks.<\/p>\n Learning the Osage language was the biggest aspect of preparation for the role.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Netflix<\/p>\n Ojibwa actor Meegwun Fairbrother says getting a firm handle on the Osage language was crucial to preparing for his role in Little House on the Prairie.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cTo me, the greatest way to show respect for a culture is to know their language, to speak their language, so that you understand their customs, their ideologies, their world beliefs from the inside and not just from the outside,\u201d Fairbrother says.<\/p>\n The actor, who has also starred in the legal drama Burden of Truth, worked with Talee Redcorn, an Osage language consultant, for six weeks to get to a place where the language felt \u201cauthentic and embodied,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cMy background is Ojibwa, Oji-cree and Cree; those are the language systems that I work with. Learning the Osage was a much different animal. It\u2019s very masculine, very forward, very direct, very beautiful. But there\u2019s also some really interesting sounds that I had not worked with before,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt like when I would speak the language, it changed how I felt. It changed how I walked, even. It changed how I entered a room and carried myself. Because the Osage are a very proud and powerful nation, I think that comes across with (the character of) Mitchell and his ability to speak several different languages.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy background is Ojibwa, Oji-cree and Cree; those are the language systems that I work with. Learning the Osage was a much different animal. It\u2019s very masculine, very forward, very direct, very beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n The inclusion of authentic language was something that was important to both the production and O\u2019Keefe personally, who says that, by the late 1970s, there were only seven traditional fluent speakers of the Osage language, owing to colonization.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you woke up tomorrow and you didn\u2019t know your language, who would you be? The expression of yourself, the world that you see, there is no world without language.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, modern Osage kids text in their language, owing to the Nation\u2019s focus on language preservation and revitalization efforts.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had to fight for all of it, and I have worked with a couple of tribes that have completely lost their language, to the point they were so crushed by colonization, they have a difficult time really trying to piece back together what their dances or traditions would have even been,\u201d O\u2019Keefe says. \u201cAll they know was that they had been there on the land.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I\u2019m very proud of all languages in all series.\u201d<\/p>\n And, when she can, O\u2019Keefe finds a place in the script to include traditional music.<\/p>\n \u201cMusic is just as important, because you\u2019re using a language and you\u2019re using a tradition and you\u2019re using a meaning to something, and so I always try, if the budget\u2019s there, to bring music in.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Keefe had just returned from a community screening of Episode 7 at the Osage Casino in Pawhuska. She is proud of the work, but so are her people.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t ask for any more than that, really, because it\u2019s about my people. It\u2019s never about me.\u201d<\/p>\n jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com<\/p>\n Alberta actress embraces \u2018badass\u2019 role<\/p>\n Alyssa Wapanat\u00e2hk, one of the stars of the Netflix series Little House on the Prairie, was aware of the previous TV iteration of the show when she was growing up, if only peripherally.<\/p>\n \u201cMy grandparents kind of had it on the TV, there in the background, just one of those shows that everybody knew about,\u201d she says in a Zoom interview from Kelowna, B.C. \u201cBut I had never watched it myself.\u201d<\/p>\n That might have been just as well. The new version, currently shooting its second season in and around Winnipeg, is distinct from the older version, specifically adding more colour and depth to Indigenous characters, especially Wapanat\u00e2hk\u2019s character, White Sun Mitchell.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Eric Zachanowich\/Netflix<\/p>\n Alyssa Wapanata\u0302hk plays White Sun Mitchell in Little House on the Prairie. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n White Sun is an Osage woman whose family life in Independence, Kan., runs parallel to the pioneering Ingalls family, adding a richer perspective.<\/p>\n \u201cLike a lot of the characters that I play, she\u2019s kind of a badass,\u201d the Fort McMurray, Alta.-born Wapanat\u00e2hk says. \u201cShe\u2019s sharp and a very protective mother and a strong life force in her home tribe and her family.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd as a woman in the Osage tribe, she, I think, is a really strong pillar and I think she would be a warrior in a lot of cases.\u201d<\/p>\n Wapanat\u00e2hk has taken on challenging roles in her career, including the role of Tiger Lily in the 2023 film Peter Pan and Wendy, in which she starred opposite Jude Law. Since a past Disney iteration of Peter Pan was overtly racist, taking the role required a lot of care. She succeeded in bringing her own culture into the mix, for example, having Tiger Lily speak Cree.<\/p>\n For that role, Wapanat\u00e2hk, a member of Bigstone Cree First Nation in Alberta, says she often consulted with her grandmother.<\/p>\n \u201cI still call her if I ever have a question about anything that has to do with our language specifically,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s always been there for me as a supporter and she\u2019s always been there for me to answer any questions I need.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think art has always been like a mirror to real life. And I think our show is revealing some things about society that we live in now.\u201d<\/p>\n The role of an Osage woman presented some new language challenges, but she still went to her grandmother for advice.<\/p>\n \u201cShe and my mom and my little sister are pretty much my biggest support system,\u201d she says. \u201cBut this time, I was speaking Osage language, a very, very different language. And I called on Talee Redcorn for that. Talee was our language coach. And he was kind of like the step-in grandparent in a way\u2026 and he\u2019s not even that old. But he was awesome to work with.\u201d<\/p>\n Redcorn, a member of the Osage Nation, also plays Governor Joe in one episode of Little House.<\/p>\n The new version of the show was intended to speak with a new audience, as opposed to gratifying the older audience of the original show, says showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine.<\/p>\n \u201cI understand that they have this place in their heart that is very important to them,\u201d Sonnenshine says. \u201cBut I do think that once they see it, they will understand that we are carrying the spirit of those books into 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n Wapanat\u00e2hk adds that we\u2019re living in a different world than the 1974-83 period of the original series.<\/p>\n \u201cI think art has always been like a mirror to real life. And I think our show is revealing some things about society that we live in now\u2026 that people are afraid of being overpowered, of being lost,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope that people will see this show and take it in with a kind of a blank slate and just like watch it as a show,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s joyful, it\u2019s happy. We\u2019re not talking about the war and we\u2019re not talking about oil and gas or anything like that. We\u2019re talking about family and community. And to me, that\u2019s so peaceful. That\u2019s why I watch TV, because it\u2019s one of those places where we could find some solace and then we could learn from it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Randall King<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t Jen Zoratti Jen Zoratti is a columnist and feature writer working in the Arts & Life department, as well as the author of the weekly newsletter NEXT<\/a>. A National Newspaper Award finalist for arts and entertainment writing, Jen is a graduate of the Creative Communications program at RRC Polytech and was a music writer before joining the Free Press in 2013. Read more about Jen<\/a>.<\/p>\n Every piece of reporting Jen produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print \u2013 part of the Free Press\u2018s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press\u2019s history and mandate<\/a>, and learn how our newsroom operates<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n
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