The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians from Santa Barbara County are featured in Netflix’s newest show, Spirit Rangers.
The animated children’s television series is about a native family who lives in a California National Park. The show features three children who are assigned as junior park rangers by their parents to help protect the land.
The show's creator, Santa Ynez Chumash member Karissa Valencia, is now the first California Native American showrunner to premiere on the streaming service.
She said she worked with about 100 native people on this project to accurately represent the different native communities depicted in the show, like the Cowlitz Indian Tribe in Washington State.
“I've never had more than one native coworker in my entire life. All the writers who worked on the series who are staff writers are indigenous, and that was super important to me because I am only one person that has one perspective,” Valencia said.
Valencia said part of the reason she created this show was because she wants Native children to watch the show with a sense of pride, and she’s excited for non-native children to see an indigenous family as superheroes. She said she took inspiration from tales passed on by her father.
“My dad would tell us the stories about how coyote and lizard made the first humans, how condor got black feathers, just all the origin stories of our animals and plants in our region. And man, I just loved them, especially [the] coyote was like a trickster spirit always up to no good and stuff,” Valencia said.
Tribal patterns are drawn onto each character’s spirit form. Valencia said they did this to show each character’s unique culture, which is something she hopes tribes will notice.
“Coyote and Lizard have all this rock art on them that's like in our cave paintings in Santa Barbara, so that's because they're Chumash. And then if we have a Cowlitz character like the Beavers, they have this Coastal Salish totem pole kind of style, because that's where they're from. So it was really cool to differentiate all the different tribes,” Valencia said.
“Spirit Rangers” premieres today on Netflix in celebration of Indigenous People’s Day.
