Native actors, TV show compete for Emmys
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By Amelia Schafer | ICT + Rapid City Journal
The 2024 Primetime Emmy Awards are set to kick off Sunday evening with several Indigenous actors making history.
Native American actresses Lily Gladstone and Kali Reis have already made history as the first Native women to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award.
The only other Native American actor to be nominated for an Emmy was August Schellenberg, a Haudenosaunee-Mohawk Canadian Actor nominated in 2007 for his performance as Sitting Bull in the HBO television movie “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.”
Gladstone, Siksikaitsitapii and Nimíipuu, received a nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress for her role as investigator Cam Bentland in the Hulu limited series “Under the Bridge.”
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The true crime series focuses on the 1997 murder of 14-year-old Reena Virk outside of Vancouver, Canada. While Gladstone’s character is fictionalized, Bentland’s story is inspired by real First Nation’s Canadians dealing with the effects of adoption out of Native families and racism.
In the same category, Seaconke Wampanoag and Cape Verdean actress Kali Reis is nominated for her role in HBO’s “True Detective: Night Country.”
Starring Jodi Foster, the series focuses on a string of missing people in rural Alaska. Reis’s character, an Alaska Native woman born in Boston who later moved back to her mother’s village, is a detective investigating the area’s strange activity.
The groundbreaking, Indigenous-led Hulu series “Reservation Dogs” also pulled in four nominations for its third and final season.
Oji-Cree Canadian actor D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai is nominated for his starring role as Bear Smallhill, a Muscogee teen navigating life in Okren, Okla.
In the show’s final season, Woon-A-Tai’s character winds up on his own journey following the group’s adventure to California.
The show also has been nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Single-Camera Cinematography, and Picture Editing.
The Emmys will air on live television at 8 p.m. EST on Sept. 15. The program will be available for streaming the following day on Hulu.