"Dark Winds" Is A Cop Drama, Steeped In Navajo Culture

[TTL News 311]

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In 1970, a journalist named Tony Hillerman launched a series of crime novels featuring two Navajo cops who work for the tribal police on a reservation in New Mexico. The books sold well, earned great reviews, won prizes and led to Hillerman being honored in 1991 by the Navajo tribal council. 

But our cultural standards have changed profoundly, and one wonders whether these mysteries would even be published now, let alone receive so much acclaim. After all, Hillerman was a white outsider whose books today would likely face charges of cultural appropriation.

Yet as it stands, the Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee novels, as they're known, are very enjoyable books, as well as valuable intellectual property. So you get why they're being turned into the TV series Dark Winds, whose second season can be seen on AMC and AMC+. 

Produced by Robert Redford and George R.R. Martin among others, Dark Winds retools and modernizes Hillerman's conception. Set amidst the fiercely beautiful New Mexico landscape of the early 1970s, this entertaining series stars, is written by, and is largely directed by Native Americans. They have enlarged the women's roles and treat Navajo culture not as sociology but as lived experience.

 

Read more here.

[Chris 2,184]

We started watching this last night and so far its pretty interesting. 

Funny story: I could swear I saw an ad saying Lou Diamond Phillips starred in this series. As we watched, I'm saying, "Man he's looking different these days, sure doesn't look like Lou Diamond Phillips."

Yeah there's a reason... it isn't Lou Diamond Phillips. It's this guy: