[Dark Winds retools and modernizes Hillermans 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.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

BACK FOR SEASON 2, ‘DARK WINDS’ IS A COP DRAMA STEEPED IN NAVAJO
CULTURE  
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John Powers
July 27, 2023
NPR
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_ 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. _

Zahn McClarnon plays Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Jessica Matten is Sgt.
Bernadette Manuelito in Season 2 of Dark Winds., Michael Moriatis/AMC

 

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
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R.R. Martin
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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.

The terrific Zahn McClarnon stars as the honorably intense Lt. Joe
Leaphorn, who — along with his nurse wife, Emma, played by Deanna
Allison — is still reeling from the death of their son in an
explosion. As coiled as a rattler, albeit a righteous one, Joe spends
most of his time with two younger investigators. There's officer
Bernadette Manuelito, known as Bern (Jessica Matten), who fears her
future is limited in the hardscrabble Navajo world. And there's Jim
Chee (Kiowa Gordon), who worked for the FBI in Season 1 but, feeling
used by them, has become a private eye.

The new season begins with a fatal bombing outside a medical center
that injures Emma. Joe suspects the bomber might be the guy who killed
his son, and with Bern at his side, begins a relentless pursuit of the
killer. Meanwhile Jim is being hired by a slippery blonde, played by
Jeri Ryan, to find a box of personal effects that was stolen from her
home.

Naturally, these investigations overlap, and soon the three are
dealing with a uranium tycoon, assorted dead bodies, mountainside
shootouts and life and death treks through the desert, not to mention
a religious cult known, ominously enough, as People of Darkness.

In adapting Hillerman's work, the show's creators keep the bones of
his '70s material, but they also want to go beyond doing just another
police drama and capture truths about Navajo life. These aims don't
fully mesh. A tad old-fashioned, the series lacks the contemporary
snap of _Reservation Dogs_
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better and more freewheeling show about Native Americans that owes
nothing to 50-year-old mystery novels. In that series, whose third
season begins next week, McClarnon shines as an amiably superstitious
cop who's vastly more relaxed — and arguably more modern — than
staid Joe Leaphorn.

Like nearly all crime shows, _Dark Winds_ has a plot that bends
toward the predictably formulaic — if you can't guess the villain,
you haven't been paying attention. The show's true interest lies in
its characters and their world — a Navajo society that is as
financially strapped as it is spiritually rich, that confronts overt
racism and government paternalism, that has its women forcibly
sterilized and its sons drafted for Vietnam, and that leaves its
members stuck between a fractured Navajo culture and the white culture
that did the fracturing.

Just as Bern must decide whether to abandon the reservation she loves
to seek a bigger future in the white world, Jim — who sports a
comically huge-collared '70s shirt — seeks a way of using his
investigative skills without being sucked into being a fed or tribal
cop. The show's best scenes are the most personal ones — like Joe
and Bern discussing whether she'd be better off working for the Border
Patrol or Joe dealing with his dad, a former tribal cop who's furious
that his son got a college education and then didn't escape, but wound
up doing the same job he did.

_Dark Winds_ is a solidly enjoyable crime drama, but in the end, it
isn't really about our heroes uncovering the killer's identity. It's
about the ways in which they're searching for their own.

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* Native Americans
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