Last week in my Hostiles review I mused on how the theme of racial justice becoming more prominent in mainstream pop culture could bring back the revisionist western. However, perhaps it might be more important to portray indigenous religion and culture in the present tense, moving ever forward, rather than a page in a history book or a set dressing in a period piece. We see this in the American Indian hip-hop artists featured in Sterlin Harjo's FX series Reservation Dog, one of which (that is, the fictional character) shares a name the titular ex-con of this movie. Mekko is the Muscogee name for "chief", though our protagonist is a see'r, one who receives prophetic visions of people's deaths. After 19 years in prison he finds his family and his reservation community have long abandoned him and he takes to finding a new community in the streets of Tulsa in order to keep his head afloat.

Much like Reservation Dogs, Mekko has one foot in a nostalgia for a lost, proud past and another in the immediate issues facing indigenous people today, namely poverty, violence, and addiction. All three are embodied by Zahn McClarnon's drifter Bill, an antagonistic force of pure destruction that disrupts the otherwise low-key slice-of-life vibe of the film. Letterboxd and Tubi categorize Mekko as a "thriller", though even at its most taut and violent, it's still holds a meditative tone. Bill's evil is a slow progressing cancer, consuming the homeless native population like an urban Mephistopheles. Mekko has been called to vanquish this evil, though his own mysterious violent past makes him hesitant to answer the call. Seven years after his rather tepid debut with Four Sheets to the Wind Harjo has a much more confident handle on filmmaking. He shoots this in psuedo-documentary style, utilizing the actual indian population of Tulsa, but nevertheless manages to be as evocative as the spirituality it draws from. It's an approach that has flourished in Reservation Dogs and it's great to see Harjo get recognition outside the Sundance circle