It’s the final episode of Reservation Dogs, the critically lauded series by Sterlin Harjo that showed it’s always a good day to be Indigenous!
Last week, Elora finally applied to college, but learned she needed her birth father’s (Ethan Hawke) vital information. She tracks him down and, although the road is a little bit rocky, we learn more about him and her deceased mother’s life. Together, a new bond is formed, one that hopefully is fully realized.
With this final season, I have tried to recap each episode of the show, giving the basics and not spoiling anything too much for you—and it all leads to this.
So, for one last time…skoden? Stoodis!
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Episode 10: “Dig”
The Plot: At Fixico’s two-day funeral, most of the women prepare meals while most of the men dig a grave, with Willie Jack taking the reins for most of the service. She was especially inspired by the words Hokti gave her about family, friends, and, most of all, community.
As Bear decides what he is going to do with his future, Cheese becomes his family’s caretaker, and Elora starts her journey to college. In all, the Res Dogs are taking separate paths, but it always leads to their beating hearts. They sprinkle some dirt on Fixico’s resting-rest place and go eat.
In the coda, Big and Bev have some hanky-panky as the veteran Dogs look to their past while embracing the future.
The Review: The finale of Reservation Dogs is a bittersweet drumbeat – the thumping throb of a proud nation of Indigenous millions that have finally had our say in the pop-culture medium. It may have taken us seventy years to recolonize the cathode rays and beam them to our homes, but at last, we have finally managed to Indigenize this digital frontier.
For the Res Dogs—all of them—we have an ultimately happy and joyous ending, going out on their own terms, something that Hollywood has never let us have. Much like Fixico himself, instead of a mournful aura of solitude, the arrival and procreation of this show and its wake amplified their grandiose feelings of celebration and revival.
Sure, much lip service will be paid by the white public at large—but they will soon be on to the next big thing while we will be the whole thing. Res Dogs is an absolute piece of kinetic art that showed me, a three-time stroke victim, that I am also an Indigenous piece of art and, someday soon, hope to be an inspiration to them the way they inspired me.
Love you, bitch.
Best Line: “I don’t eat that shit…it’s white people food.” - Maximus
Funniest Moment: After responding to the call of nature, Bear whistles for a ghost—instead, the spirit of William Knifeman appears, giving Bear a riotous farewell.
Oklahoma Soundtrack Pick: The Band – “The Weight”
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