The action thriller Prey was mostly filmed on a First Nation in Canada.
Nominations for the 75th Emmy Awards were announced Wednesday and amongst the nods were the Indigenous-focused stories Prey and Reservation Dogs.
The Predator prequel, filmed primarily in the Stoney Nakoda First Nation west of Calgary with a majority Indigenous cast, received six nominations, including outstanding directing, writing, and made- for-TV movie.
The film, set in 1719, follows Amber Midthunder as a young Comanche woman who dreams of becoming a hunter. She is the first person in her tribe to notice there is a Predator hunting her people and eventually goes toe-to-toe with the creature.
Prey is eligible for an Emmy because it was released directly to streaming; the Emmy’s are typically awarded to excellence in the American television industry.
Reservation Dogs, a comedy centered around the antics of four Indigenous teens in Oklahoma, received a nomination for outstanding sound editing for a comedy or drama series.
Was snubbed
However, some media outlets, including Time Magazine and Rolling Stone, feel the ground-breaking dramedy was snubbed.
“How could the Academy possibly honour the show’s technical artistry without acknowledging – for the second year in a row – that it is also quite simply one of the most entertaining, inventive, and poignant TV series of the current decade, in any genre, with a cast of young Indigenous actors who could hold their own with any celebrity nominee?” Time said about the absence of nominations in the acting, writing and directing categories for a comedy series.
Reservation Dogs co-creator Sterlin Harjo responded to the shout-outs in an Instagram story.
“I truly don’t get too into the Emmy craziness. We figured we wouldn’t get nominated again. Racism doesn’t just end in a f*cked up down because one show…having said that, what @Time said was pretty hardcore.”
The show has received praise for its representation of Indigenous characters and it’s powerful depiction that prayer and ceremony can occur in unexpected places.
Reservation Dogs was named the best show of 2022 by the New York Times and its third and final season hits streaming sites in August.
