An ‘Indigenous gothic horror’
New show ‘Trickster’ turns the stereotype on its head,
First things first: No one is riding horses in the new Indigenous drama “Trickster,” coming to CBC on Wednesday. A bicycle, yes; also a motorcycle. And Jared, the teenager at the heart of the story, gets a motorized scooter to help with his after-school job delivering fastfood chicken.
“There’s so many people who are just so used to that old narrative of a native on horseback with the bow and arrow,” says Joel Oulette, the Red River Métis and Swampy Cree actor who plays Jared. “You’ve got to change that perspective.”
“Trickster” should go a long way to meeting that goal.
Michelle Latimer, the celebrated Algonquin and Métis director who co-created the show based on the Eden Robinson novel “Son of a Trickster,” calls the series a “decolonial comingof-age story.”
Jared is a pretty average 17year-old: He goes to school, works part-time, hangs out with his friends and has a crush on the girl who just moved in across the street. He also has some friction with his parents, despite having close relationships with both, and a sideline making ecstasy tablets.
Then there are the weird things he starts seeing — a hairless, garbage-eating monster, a doppelganger, a talking crow — not to mention the disquieting stranger who comes to town claiming to have a connection to Jared and his mother, Maggie.
Jared is “an ordinary teenager. I was an ordinary teenager,” says Oulette, who was 17 when he played him. “A lot of people can relate to being a teenager, and how stressful it is and what you’ve gotta deal with: your family … school and all the pressure.”
“Trickster” blends that general relatability with a specificity that’s rooted in Indigenous lore, in particular the traditions of the Haisla Nation of northern British Columbia and the shape-shifting, mischievous, centuries-old rule breaker who’s at the centre of Eden’s novel and the show. And that’s something that makes its cast and creator proud.
“I feel like as an actor I was preparing for this part my whole career,” says the actor who plays Maggie, Crystle
Lightning, who’s from the Enoch Cree Nation. “There are just so many layers to her.”
And then there are the supernatural elements and Indigenous stories layered into the series, which add to her sense of pride. “It’s not your stereotypical Indigenous story where it’s like a period piece,” she says.
Latimer calls it “Indigenous gothic horror.” When she first read Robinson’s book, she loved the way it combined Indigenous characters who felt familiar to her with “magical realism that is rooted in … our real oral history and storytelling culture. That for me just put it next level.”
“It’s very exciting and means a lot,” concurs Kalani Queypo, who’s of Blackfeet, Swedish and Indigenous Hawaiian descent, and plays the trickster of the title. “I know that young people are going to watch this and be like, ‘Well, is that a real thing? Like the trickster thing? Who are the Haisla people?’ That’s my biggest hope, is that people are going to dig into that because they’re going to want to find out more about that element of this story.”
For Anna Lambe, who plays Jared’s love interest, Sarah, the key attraction was the character’s identity as an activist.
“I wasn’t sure that I was ever going to act again,” says the Inuk actor, whose only other credit was in the 2018 film “The Grizzlies,” about students in an Arctic town finding hope in the midst of a teen suicide epidemic.
Lambe had pursued her own activism for about a year and a half, talking about social issues in Nunavut, but didn’t see the film and TV industry as a way to further her goals. “But when I saw how I could play this character and really (have a) voice on issues that are important to me through a character, I said this is something that I want to do,” she says.
To be sure, “Trickster” doesn’t shy away from colonialism and its effects on Indigenous people. Sarah organizes a “die-in” to protest a pipeline cutting through Indigenous land. Both Maggie and Jared’s father Phil, played by Craig Lauzon, have substance-abuse issues. And Jared’s grandmother Sophia, played by Crystle Lightning’s real-life mother, Georgina Lightning, is a residential school survivor who passed her trauma on to Maggie.
“Colonialism is in Eden’s book as well as environmental stewardship, but I wanted it to be accessible,” Latimer says.
“I feel like a lot of times when I was pitching work — and I mean there is systemic racism in the industry — they would be like, ‘Oh, it’s a native story. Is it going to be sad?’ And it’s like, no, it’s gonna be funny and exciting and there’s gonna be magical monsters … it was a way to deal with the issues that I felt was accessible and entertaining for people, but also has a deeper message.”
There’s a certain amount of serendipity involved in the fact that Latimer and her co-creator Tony Elliott (“Orphan Black”) got to make “Trickster” at all.
When Latimer sought the rights to Robinson’s book in 2017, she was competing with far bigger, non-Indigenous producers with deeper pockets. While having dinner with Jennifer Kawaja of Sienna Films (“Cardinal”) about a different project, Latimer lamented that “it really sucks that Indigenous people, we can’t even afford our own authors … And she just turned to me and said, ‘Why don’t we do it together?’ ”
The deal was cemented after Latimer wrote a letter to Robinson explaining her vision for the show and the fact there would be a team of Indigenous people both in front of and behind the camera.
CBC greenlit the first season in early 2019 and has already renewed the series for a second.
Latimer says that to counteract the “Indians and leathers and feathers” portrayal of Indigenous people onscreen — borrowing a phrase from Indigenous author Thomas King — “you need Indigenous people behind the camera, crafting the narrative and helming the narrative. And that’s what’s so important about ‘Trickster’ is that we’re doing that. And not only are we doing that, we’re doing that on the national network, which I’m really proud of.”
Her hope is that viewers will be “entertained and emotionally moved and surprised,” but also challenged in their “preconceived notions of what native communities, native family, native love looks like. And we can actually start to humanize the experience in a way that I think Canada needs. We need to grow more in that direction and I hope that this is a contribution toward that healing.” “Trickster” debuts Wednesday at 9 p.m. on CBC and can be streamed on CBC Gem.