How ‘Dark Winds’ delivers

For Eyre, there was also a transformative moment in catching the 1949 cowboy-and-Indians film “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” starring John Wayne. Director John Ford shot many scenes in the Southwest, a distant land from Eyre’s neighborhood in Portland, Oregon.

“Monument Valley was some of the very first images that I remember,” said Eyre, recalling the earthen formations making up the backdrop of the movie, including the famed Mittens of Monument Valley.

If the scenery of Ford’s epic drama was raw and undeveloped, so was the portrayal of Native Americans and Indigenous people in film at the time. Even as Red Power and American Indian Movement activists took to the streets and occupied federal buildings, mainstream attitudes still largely saw Indians as savage, dumb or primitive.

Which is what makes Eyre and other Native producers grateful for a more positive trend that’s happened over the last few decades. Eyre’s 1998 film, “Smoke Signals,” led the way with its deeply personal story of family, forgiveness and frybread.

“Native people were three-dimensional, were funny, were human, and that was really incredible,” Eyre explained. “I think ‘Smoke Signals’ really had a time and a place. I was getting concerned that the continuum of that was starting to be quite a distance away until ‘Rutherford Falls’ and ‘Reservation Dogs’ — and all these other projects that have in the past five years — exploded.”

This red renaissance includes AMC’s brooding and often mystical mystery series “Dark Winds,” based on Tony Hillerman’s novels. The plots largely revolve around Joe Leaphorn, a lawman with the Navajo Tribal Police Department, and fellow officers Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito. Eyre has directed half of the series’ episodes, which are based on some of the novels’ storylines. His favorite part is the relationships between the characters, especially that of Leaphorn and his strong-willed wife, Emma.

“I get to be part of that,” said Eyre, noting that the couple are tested yet remain each other’s core. As to having a distinct mark on the show, he said, “My signature is the beauty of the landscape, and then the heart of the characters, and I kind of let those things lead, and I’m blessed to be part of it.”

Natives, everywhere

Besides Native people in the director’s chair, there are many others behind the scenes as well as on set. Navajo consultants Jennifer and Manny Wheeler work to build authenticity in the series, helping with everything from ceremonies to props to how tribal members interact with each other.

“I have a sense — without denigrating Hillerman’s accomplishments or his work at all — that he took the Navajo story and told it through his own lens,” said showrunner John Wirth, who’s non-Native. “And that worked very well for someone like me who was devoted to all his novels, when I was a young man reading his books. But I think it was somewhat off-putting for Indigenous people who were reading that stuff.”

Wirth would like to see Navajo people reappropriate the stories. “So rather than telling it from Hillerman’s lens, I wanted to take his stories and tell them through the Navajo lens. To that point we worked very hard to make sure that we are telling this story from a Native perspective, and we are honoring all of the aspects of Native culture that we are talking about.”

Others are talking, too.

“When a show like ‘Dark Winds’ made its way onto the desks of industry executives, it is no mystery as to why cultural consultants are a critical part of the process,” said Vincent Schilling, an Akwesasne Mohawk journalist and Rotten Tomatoes critic. “What executives are learning is that Native culture is so definitive and detailed, the beauty of Native culture can be expressed more readily and beautifully.”

Schilling added that one unexpected development is that the film industry has learned that Native people — the original storytellers — have some pretty amazing stories of their own to tell.

“And some of the troublesome history is even being rewritten with culturally respectful prowess. The industry has opened the doors for hardworking film industry professionals such as Chris Eyre, Sterlin Harjo and Sydney Freeland and others.”

Portraying Natives across time

Kiowa Gordon, who plays Jim Chee in “Dark Winds,” said it’s challenging at times to be the lawman on the rez given the half-century between the storyline and his mindset.

“You gotta look at what it was like to be a Navajo man in the 1970s,” explained Gordon. “And I have to strip away some of my contemporariness. I was born in 1990, and we’re living in 2025, so you gotta transport yourself back to then, but also not play the stereotypes of what they were back in the ‘70s.”

Gordon momentarily lapsed into an impression of the dated “ugh and mug” type of TV Indian that he’s trying to avoid.

“Oh, yeah, me want big wampum!” he said in a stilted, heavy voice before chuckling and shifting back to his regular self. “Get out of town! I don’t think anybody ever talked like that.”

Besides checking their own “contemporariness” on set, Zahn McClarnon — who plays the lead, Joe Leaphorn — explained that the actors also work to learn the Navajo language, including accents and inflection. That takes time and effort, but he said the payoff is huge.

“Native kids are finally seeing themselves in film and TV in a positive, non-

stereotypical way,” said McClarnon. “That’s important! It’s critical for our cultures to be seen, it’s a reflection authentically portrayed for the first time in TV and film. Non-native people are seeing a different aspect of our cultures for the first time. They’re responding to it.”

Authentic pain

This most recent season brought an element that hit hard for many tribal communities: that of clergy abuse against Native youth.

In her director’s commentary about the episode, “Ábidoo’niidęę (What He Had Been Told),” director Erica Tremblay said that everyone on the “Dark Winds” team could sense how meaningful this particular hour of television could be.

“I was so moved by their beautiful balance of mythology and memory — using a sacred Navajo story to illuminate the darker corners of Leaphorn’s past,” wrote Tremblay. “As a Native director, I recognized how rarely we get to tell stories like this about our communities. I was excited to bring it to the screen.”

The horrific scene where Leaphorn sees his cousin being sexually abused by a priest was one of the show’s most challenging sequences to film. Tremblay closed the set, brought in an intimacy coordinator and did her best to see that the cast and crew had access to a safe space.

“As a Native person, I understood the weight of responsibility in depicting this particular kind of historical trauma,” said Tremblay. “It was important that we cared for and protected each other while addressing such sensitive subject matter.”

McClarnon praised the way the difficult scene was handled and said he could relate to the material.

“I went through some things as a kid,” recalled McClarnon, who grew up in Browning, Montana. “I’m not going to get into details, but they’re very similar to how Joe was affected when he was a kid. As human beings, we go through these painful experiences: loss, tragedy, joy. As an actor all I try to do is lean into that. And draw from those lived experiences.”

On the horizon: Season 4

With shooting for the upcoming season of “Dark Winds” underway, Eyre and others are going to be occupying the director’s chair out in the beautiful and sometimes foreboding landscape of the Southwest. Eyre has been tight-lipped about what to expect for Leaphorn and crew, except that he’s excited to see what happens.

Reflecting back to his childhood of watching old Hollywood westerns with cowboys shooting grunting men in redface, Eyre said he found a sense of satisfaction after filming for Season 2 wrapped up.

“I stood there and finished the day of shooting Monument Valley,” said Eyre. “And I really had this moment of just self-epiphany, where I felt like we had accomplished something as Native filmmakers in that we were shooting Native performers in Monument Valley, reclaiming a story that took place in the beautiful Monument Valley.”

Schilling says this milestone is thanks to Native talent and discerning audiences that don’t settle for tropes and stereotypes.

“Ever since the debacle of Adam Sandler’s ‘Ridiculous Six,’ the film industry has placed much more importance on the accuracy of Native representation,” said Schilling. “It’s not as much about respect as some might hope, but for fear of social media backlash, which can literally destroy the potential success of a project. Hollywood is a for-profit industry, and when money can suffer from bad behavior, film industry executives will comply.”