![]() ![]() Lesser known is that we also come from generations of real-to-reel Comanches working in and around cinema in its production, performance, and perception as filmmakers, scriptwriters, actors, consultants, and critics.įrom my great-great-great grandfather and last Comanche chief Quanah Parker’s co-starring role in the silent film The Bank Robbery (1908) to the story of his Comanche-captured white mother Cynthia Ann Parker inspiring The Searchers (1956) and other westerns, to my auntie LaDonna Harris adopting, or capturing, Johnny Depp during production of Disney’s The Lone Ranger (2013), real-to-reel Comanches have always been in the cinematic imaginary at the complex confluences of self-representing and getting represented by others. We descend from a long lineage of proud warriors and peacekeepers, caretakers and captive takers, and traders and raiders who established in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries what Finnish historian Pekka Hämäläinen calls “the Comanche empire” in northern Mexico and the southwestern United States of la Comanchería. May this story, then, honor Auntie and her love-filled teachings as an elder, mentor, artist, and consultant grounded in Comanche epistemology, knowledge, arts, and film. I come from a tradition where, as my late auntie and fellow Prey consultant Juanita Pahdopony said, “We’re obligated to tell our story.” To be obligated is to be bound by principles to do something, in this case, a storytelling of self and community that recognizes our principled roles in relationships, kinship, and accountability. Thanks also to the Comanche poet Sy Hoahwah for the connection and recommendation. ![]() My thanks to WLT editor Michelle Johnson for the invitation to share thoughts here as a consultant for the new Hulu movie Prey, or K uhtaamia in Comanche, within the much older history of cinematic Comanches. I am a parent of four beautiful children, playwright of Comanche-centric theater, and professor of Native media and sound at the University of Oklahoma. In the N um u tekwap u, the Comanche language, I say, Haa, haitsn u. ![]() Dustin Tahmahkera co-consulted on the film with his aunt, Juanita Pahdopony, to whom the film is dedicated. Hulu’s Prey -a narrative between a small band of Comanches, a humanoid predator, and French fur trappers on Comanche homelands-is the first film fully dubbed in the Comanche language. ![]()
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