Shadow of the R*ugar*u TV series----a reflection a year later

Last year, I saw a miniseries that has haunted my very being for almost a year since I had first seen it.

I was surprised to see we had APTN as part of our cable, perhaps a special circumstance because it was during Native American Heritage Month in the US. It was one of those days when I was home alone, and just wanted to sit in quiet.

Shadow of the R*ugar*u (censored for my fellow Indigenous folks), is a 40-minute miniseries broken down into several episodes, chronicling the journey of young Metis-Cree trapper, sâkowêw, who not only has to deal with the changing political world around her, but face her past which was razed by an ancient evil.

The results are pretty stunning.

It's now on Apple TV+ (with subtitles) You can also see the IMDB page of it here. I had originally watched it without subtitles, which was at times confusing; I could pick out some of the dialog, as Cree is similar to other Algonquian languages, but I was pretty lost in other parts of it.

The director is Metis director Jordan Waunch, who worked directly under the guidance of Elders and Culture Keepers--and it absolutely shows. As he states in this interview--it is a communal story, it is not one story

The cast is incredible and Morgan Holmstrom is absolutely stunning as sâkowêw. I wish that the project had been longer so that her character could live on screen just a little while longer.

It definitely checked off all of the boxes of werewolf horror (told on our own terms) and Indigenous storytelling traditions. I won't get the ending away, but it did shock me, and I think it speaks a lot to our traumas.

All in all, I wish that this was more widely well-known,  because it's very good. I've also heard good things about Prey, so I am hoping for more Indigenous-based horror films, especially more werewolf ones.