REBROADCAST: Netflix series ‘Spirit Rangers’ centers Native American voices and traditions for young audiences

It’s perhaps fitting that “Spirit Rangers,” an animated series on Netflix made for preschool-aged audiences, premiered last October on Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Now in its second season, the show revolves around three Cowlitz and Chumash Indian siblings — Kodi, Summer and Eddy Skycedar — who magically transform into a bear cub, red-tailed hawk and turtle. They then embark on adventures in a fictional California national park where they live and where their parents work as rangers. The creative team behind “Spirit Rangers” are all Native American, including Joey Clift, an L.A.-based comedian, television writer and enrolled member of the Cowlitz Tribe of Southwest Washington who also serves as a consulting producer on the show. Clift wrote a recent episode about salmon habitat restoration which features a maternal guardian salmon spirit voiced by Cowlitz Tribal member and musician Debora Iyall. Clift and Iyall join us to talk about their collaboration on “Spirit Rangers,” and how the show is both a source of pride and empowerment for Indigenous storytelling.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. A new animated series for preschool audiences debuted on Netflix last October. It’s called ‘Spirit Rangers.’ It’s about and by Native people. It’s focused on three Cowlitz and Chumash siblings – Kodi, Summer and Eddy Skycedar – who can magically transform into a bear cub, a red-tailed hawk and a turtle. The second season of the series was released recently. Joey Clift has been working on it since the beginning. He’s an L.A.-based comedian, television writer and enrolled member of the Cowlitz Tribe of Southwest Washington who serves as a staff writer and consulting producer on the show. He wrote a recent episode about salmon habitat restoration that features a guardian salmon spirit voiced by the musician and Cowlitz Tribal member, Debora Iyall. They both join us now. It’s great to have both of you on Think Out Loud.

Debora Iyall: Well, thank you so much. I’m really happy to be here.

Joey Clift: Yeah. Thanks for having me. I’m so excited to talk about the show.

Miller: I’m thrilled to have both of you on. Joey, first. Do you remember when you first heard that there was going to be an animated show on Netflix about and by Native people?

Clift: Yeah, I was brought in, in the very early stages. I remember hearing about the show, kind of rumblings from friends about a really great Chumash TV writer named Karissa Valencia, who was looking for writers to staff a show that she created on Netflix. This was like in a pre writers room – very, very early stages. We met to talk about it in February 2020, like two weeks before things shut down due to the pandemic. Initially, when she pitched the idea to me, I wasn’t totally sure about that because I’m a comedian. I do a lot of stuff in the alt-comedy space, and I’ve never really written for like this young of an age group. But then, when she described it to me as ‘Power Rangers’ meets ‘Sailor Moon’ but Native, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m so in for this.’

Miller: She spoke your language there.

Clift: Yeah. Yeah, I was just like, ‘Oh, this is very much my jam.’

Miller: You mentioned the show’s creator Karissa Valencia is Chumash, as is the mom of this family. The dad is Cowlitz. How did that happen?

Clift: In the early stages of the writers’ room in May of 2020, we had a lot of conversations about understanding that this was the first animated kid show in the history of U.S. animation, created by a Native person with an all Native writers’ room. It really felt like we had a lot of opportunities to say what we wanted to say about Native representation in the media. And so we had a long conversation about what we wanted the tribal makeup of the family to be. Would they be from one tribe? Would they be a mixed-tribe family, where the mom and dad are from different tribes? Would they be from made-up tribes or real tribes?

What we landed on is that both of our tribes are relatively small, comparatively, only a couple of 1000 members, and we don’t often see our tribes represented in media. So we thought it would be cool if it was a mixed-tribe family, with the mom being a member of the Chumash Tribe and the dad being a member of my tribe. Karissa was very gracious in asking if I wanted to do that, so I wanted to make sure I was doing it the right way. So I pitched it to my tribe’s Tribal Council and Cultural Resources Board. They had a vote on it, and since then, once receiving that vote, we’ve worked hand in hand with the Tribe, making sure that all the Cowlitz representation on the show is very spot on and cool and as honorable and respectful as it possibly can be.

Miller: What was your pitch? I mean, when you brought this to the Tribal Council, a sovereign nation, what did you ask them?

Clift: Oh, I mean, what I asked them was - I’m gonna say, with a lot of emotion, basically explaining the importance of the complete lack of positive and authentic Native representation that we’d seen as kids growing up. As somebody who’d been working in Hollywood for a while, I had the opportunity to work on a show that wouldn’t just put Native representation forward but would put Cowlitz representation forward in a real way. And so I really just wrote a very emotional statement to them, explaining our intentions with the show, what we wanted to do.

The Cowlitz creed is ‘We are the Forever People’ and I thought that, with my position on the show and with the work of a lot of culture keepers from our people, we could make sure that that isn’t just a motto – it’s a promise. And I think that, for me at least, by bringing Cowlitz characters, Cowlitz language and stories inspired by legends into Netflix, which is a global platform that everybody can watch, I could be doing my part to help guarantee that in the future.

Miller: And obviously that pitch worked. Debora, I’m curious: part of what Joey just said there is that there wasn’t a show like this in the past when he was growing up. That is true for you. What went through your mind when you first heard about this show?

Iyall: I thought it was phenomenal because I just remember as a teenager trying to find out more specifics, having grown up in California, about the Cowlitz Tribe and having information be pretty hard to come by.

Miller: No internet and not a lot of, or maybe not any, Cowlitz people around you.

Iyall: Right, because I didn’t grow up in Washington at all. My mom and dad split up when I was two and a half years old, so we moved to California then.

Miller: What went through your mind when Joey reached out to you to voice the character of the Great Sa’mn Spirit?

Iyall: I was completely excited and up for it, of course. And the fact that I get to sing as well… well, that was just another plus because I love to sing. That’s how a lot of people know me, so I figured that any of my fans that heard about that would think, ‘Wow, what a great opportunity.’

Miller: Joey, can you describe the setup for one of the stories you wrote for this new second season? It’s called ‘Salmon Where Are You?’

Clift: Yeah, for sure. The episode is about the dad of the Skycedar family, who’s a member of the Cowlitz Tribe, wanted to create a salmon restoration project for Xus National Park, which is the fictional Southern California national park that the show is based in. He needed to track down some salmon that exist in this lake in Xus National Park to basically show members of the Parks Department as well as the Chumash Tribe that salmon already exist in this park. So you’re increasing a population and not establishing a population of salmon that doesn’t exist. The kids really want to help their dad to find salmon, so they use their powers to transform and visit Spirit Park to see if they can track down any sort of Chumash okowoč spirit, which is salmon in Chumash. They happen across the Great Sa’mn Spirit from the Cowlitz Tribe, who’s visiting in the Cowlitz Nation, who is helping a small population of okowoč in a small kind of side lake in the park. For me, it was such an honor and an immediate thought of: Oh, I have to get Debora Iyall to voice that character because she’s such a great representative of our people.

And like you talked about earlier, and Debora talked about this earlier. For me, the first time that I heard my tribe’s name mentioned, by somebody that was not a direct family member, was listening to 107.7 The End in Seattle, Washington. Hearing a Romeo Void song, which Debora is the lead singer of, and the DJ, after the song sang, “That was a ‘Never Say Never’ by Romeo Void which is, you know, lead singer is Debora Iyall, who’s a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe.” I was just driving in my car. It was 2003, I was driving in my car to community college. And I almost got into an accident because I was like, ‘What? There’s other Cowlitz people? There’s another Cowlitz person that’s a member of this cool post-punk/New Wave band?’ So yeah, it’s just, I’m so glad that I was able to get her involved, and she was into this.

Iyall: Yeah, absolutely.

Miller: Let’s have a listen to a clip from the show. We’ll hear the kids in the show and Debora as well. This is when they have met you, the Great Sa’mn Spirit, in this sort of side lake. Let’s have a listen.

Excerpt from “Spirit Rangers”:

[Eddy Skycedar]: ‘This tiny pond sure is crowded.’

[Summer Skycedar]: ‘You all should come to the lake. There’s way more wiggle room.’

[Kodi Skycedar]: ‘Our dad is working hard to make the lake perfect for salmon to live in again. What do you say?’

[Great Sa’mn Spirit]: ‘If you think the lake is ready for some slammin’ salmon, I’ll wrangle the okowoč salmon squad [whistling]. They’ll be much happier in their traditional home.’

[Eddy Skycedar]: ‘It’s gonna be a lot harder to go up the rapids than down. I don’t think my bubbles are strong enough to carry all of us.’

[Great Sa’mn Spirit]: ‘Never say never. I’ve got your back. Just hold on tight.’

Miller: There is a little Easter egg there for fans with ‘never say never’ – a reference to the song that Joey just mentioned from Romeo Void. And then that next line, Debora, what does ‘I’ve got your back’ mean to you in this context?

Iyall: Well, we’re all gonna work together. That’s really the point of the song as well is that it will take all of us, and we need to work together. So ‘I’ve got your back’ is sort of literal too as well because the Sa’mn Spirit is carrying the canoe. So, yeah, well, ‘you’ve got my back,’ but ‘I’ve got your back,’ you know.

My sister called me when she was watching it with her grandkids. She was so excited at that line. She was like, ‘Oh, we need to get t-shirts made that say, “Never say never. I’ve got your back.” and a picture of the cartoon character.’ So, yeah, it’s pretty exciting. And that’s Joey, who wrote those lines.

Miller: Joey, how have you thought about balancing important information that you want to impart, whether it’s cultural information or scientific – talking here about salmon habitat and cooling the water – so all that on the one hand and then adventure and excitement to keep four-year-olds watching?

Clift: I think that that is sort of like leaning into the limitations of the medium. Every episode of ‘Spirit Rangers’ is about 16 script pages on page, which translates to, I forget the exact number, but it’s like 11 minutes and 30 seconds, 12 minutes or so. Because of that, to hit all the story beats that you gotta hit, you gotta just keep things moving. So, there were definitely earlier drafts of the script where I went into a lot more detail about salmon restoration. But then I kind of thought, ‘Oh, we just need to hit the highlights instead of going into immense detail about the history of salmon restoration in the Pacific Northwest.’

I think that I try to look at a lot of this stuff, and something that I’m really excited about with ‘Spirit Rangers’ is inserting what I think about are sort of like information hooks. So, if you watch this episode with your kid, and you want to know more about our people’s involvement in salmon restoration, you could Google it, and there are definitely resources online. Or referencing somebody like Deb Haaland, who’s the current Secretary of the Interior, with the hopes that, I’m not giving her entire biography, but that parents watching this would think, ‘Oh, that’s really cool. I’ll Google that and tell my kid more about Deb Haaland.’ So I think it’s sort of wanting to honor my people and include cool Cowlitzy strikes like ‘Never Say Never,’ which is a great Romeo Void song, while also trying to just push the story forward and not making it too self indulgent.

Miller: Debora, what did you want to say?

Iyall: I was gonna say, I thought it was also really great that he mentioned the Yurok and the Karuk and the Hoopa [Tribes] and the work that they’ve done for salmon restoration for a long time. Because, being from California, I gravitated toward Northern California and lived among those tribes and taught at the Indian Action Council preschool in Eureka and became friends with people and camped on the river, where they were catching salmon and everything. So I felt like, wow, that reflects in my background of knowing salmon culture from Northern California.

Clift: I have to give a shout out to Joely Proudfit, who’s a really amazing cultural consultant for ‘Spirit Rangers,’ who’s a member of a Southern California Tribe who is just an expert on salmon restoration all along the West Coast. Those were a lot of her suggestions to include those lines. I’m so glad she did because I want the show to be as inclusive to all Native folks as well as non-Native folks. There’s an opportunity to learn and just experience these cool stories.

Miller: Joey, can you give us a sense for what it’s been like for you to be in the writers’ room for this production? I mean, it’s a first: an all Native writers’ room for an animated series about Native young people and adults as well. What’s the writers’ room like?

Clift: Oh, it’s just so cool. I mean, working on this show, every morning logging on to a Zoom chat of other Native folks, which is a first for my career. Usually I’m the only Native person in the room. I think that working with so many other Native folks, there’s so much, what we call ‘Indian 101′ or ‘Native 101′ that we don’t have to really wade through to kind of just get to the story points. Like I can say, ‘Oh, we should have Deb Haaland be the person that sends the Parks Department, and we should reference that.’ I feel like, to a lot of non-Natives, they’re not necessarily gonna understand the significance of Deb Haaland, so I’d have to stop and explain to them why she’s important and why she’s so cool. Whereas to other Native folks in the room, they would immediately know. ‘Oh, Deb Haaland, the first Native Secretary of the Interior. Of course, we have to mention her on this show.’

Just a quick side story: We actually found out that Deb Haaland was named Secretary of the Interior while we were in a ‘Spirit Rangers’ voice record session, and we celebrated like we won the Super Bowl. It was like, there were tears, people’s phones were blowing up with texts because it was the first in history [of] a Native person receiving a Secretary-level position in the U.S. Presidential Cabinet. That’s huge, you know?

Iyall: Absolutely.

Miller: Just briefly, what have you heard, Joey, from members of the Cowlitz Tribe about this particular episode?

Clift: I think that what I’ve heard about this has really been just like nothing but love for my people who see and appreciate the story and the work that we put into it. And honestly, one of my favorite reactions is honestly from Debora and her sister… Sandra, who…

Iyall: Sandra. Yeah.

Clift: Yeah, Sandra. There was a specific line that I wrote in the episode that was a very personal line to me to include – it was really cool that she screencapped it – which is ‘We may not be in Cowlitz territory but us Cowlitz spirits are here for our own.’ That, for me as a member of our tribe that… I didn’t grow up in southern Washington State, I live in Los Angeles now. I feel like it was so important to me to include that, ‘Oh, even if you don’t live in your people’s Aboriginal territory, you’re still a member of your tribe. Your culture isn’t necessarily a place, it’s a connection to your people.’ Also, knowing Debora’s story, it’s like it felt so cool to hear her saying those words. I feel like every time that I read that in the script or watched it, I cried.

Iyall: Yeah.

Clift: I’m so glad that it seems like Debora and Sandra also caught how meaningful it was for me to write that.

Miller: Joey and Debora, thank you so much for joining us. Congratulations.

Iyall: It’s been a pure pleasure. Thank you.

Clift: Thank you so much. It’s really an honor.

Miller: Joey Clift is a comedian, television writer and enrolled member of the Cowlitz Tribe of Southwest Washington. He serves as staff writer and consulting producer on the Netflix show, ‘Spirit Rangers.’ Debora Iyall, who is the lead singer in the band Romeo Void, plays the Sa’mn Spirit in an episode in the second season of the series.

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