Melissa Harris-Perry: Back with The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry and I've brought along a few friends.

Speaker 2: Summer, Kodi, Eddy, as of today, you are officially Junior Park Rangers.

Speaker 3: This is the best day of my life.

[music]

Speaker 4: The spirit rangers are here to protect-

Spirit Rangers: -every crook, cranny, and critter.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Summer, Kodi, and Eddy are the Spirit Rangers, a trio of animated Native American siblings who protect our national parks with their magical powers of transformation. The animated series debuts on Netflix Monday, October 10th, which is also Indigenous People's Day. Joining me now is the series creator and executive producer Karissa Valencia, a member of the Santa Ynez Chumash tribe in California. Karissa, welcome to The Takeaway.

Karissa Valencia: Hi, Melissa. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What is the genesis of the idea for the Spirit Rangers?

Karissa Valencia: Spirit Rangers came about for a variety of reasons. One is that I am a huge animation fan, big animation nerd and wanted to create more content for kids with native heroes and native leads. One of my favorite movies growing up was of course Pocahontas like many. I was a '90s baby and she meant everything to me. I remember meeting her at our powwow one year and I asked her to sign my DVD.

I was so happy to meet her because she looked like me and my sister. Then when I got older and realized the source material was not great and it was all made by non-natives, it was such a gut punch and realizing like, "Oh my gosh, if I want to make change, I have to be on the other side of the camera." I guess it really came about when I was working for Chris Nee. I was her script coordinator at the time on Vampirina and Doc McStuffins and was really introduced into the preschool space and I had my nose in the air at preschool at the time. I thought, "That's just baby stuff," and didn't really think about it. My first day on the job I read the script called Hannah the Brave for Doc McStuffins.

It was about cancer, a kid with cancer. It just blew my mind that we could tell these type of stories. Spirit Rangers was an idea I had in my mind, it's like all tribes have traditional stories that are like how did the condor get its black feathers or how did the sun get in the sky? We have so many from all over. Every tribe is so different and it's really like Grimm's Fairy Tales which is perfect for preschoolers.

I had this idea of kids transforming because my tribe believes in that. We have stories of our bear doctors who can transform. It really clicked when I realized as a Californian I'm very lucky to have gone to all of our national parks that are so beautiful. I realized I had never met an indigenous park ranger which was crazy to me because when I would go hiking in our state parks with my dad or fishing, he could name every tree, every flower he could see.

If there was a track in the mud, he'd be like, "That was a mountain lion. It was just here." He knew this land like the back of his hand. It was crazy to me that I had never met a park ranger who was indigenous. In my imaginary world, this is now a family of park rangers who are taking care of their land. They're the original stewards and they're using modern technology today and celebrating their native culture but also living in the present day, which was also really important to me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I wanted to [unintelligible 00:03:40] that exactly because there can be-- when I first heard, I was like, "Wait, they're magical?" Because that idea of magical Black folks, magical native folks. It seems like you're actually pulling more the magic of childhood here but still connecting it in ways that allow it to be quite modern, quite contemporary.

Karissa Valencia: Yes, I think so. I think all of our stories, or those traditional stories, are so universal. Those universal lessons of learning to share, be a better community member, and taking care of your land and place. All of that can be learned by anybody in any space. I was really excited to create our own native magic and what did that look like when they transformed, what did the spirits look like?

Animation was perfect for it because there's so much freedom, you could do anything. It was such a breath of fresh air to give my team this creative freedom to make the show they always wish they had as a kid. It was a really, really fun process.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What kind of adventures are our spirit rangers going to go on?

Karissa Valencia: The park is set in fictional Southern California and it's very fictional because it looks like the Disneyland of national parks. In every episode, the kids will assist a spirit who's in danger and help them find their way. For us as humans in this series, when you see a thunderstorm, it'll look just like a bunch of dark clouds, but when you are a spirit ranger and transform, you'll look at those same clouds and see that it's actually a family of thunderbirds. Everything in the park duals as another spirit, which just goes right back to my love letter for national parks and our environment and hopefully kids, next time they want to squish that spider or whatever, they'll think about how we're all connected.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You mentioned one of definitely my favorite humans, Chris Nee, who is the creator of Doc McStuffins. You had your nose up in the air about the preschool space. Then actually I think about Doc and not only was Doc important to my daughters as preschoolers, but I love a good Doc McStuffins episode. I've learned a lot from her and I'm wondering about whether or not we might have an opportunity to see some real-life guest stars animated. I'm thinking here of when Doc McStuffins went to the Obama White House and met the first lady, are we going to get some animated superstars in this?

Karissa Valencia: Oh, definitely. First of all, the cast is just-- every native character is voiced by a native actor and we also bring in some real-life heroes like you mentioned. One of my writers, Shelley Dennis, who's fantastic, she wanted to do an episode that tackled what it meant to be a chief, because for her tribe they had chiefs and not all tribes do. There's a stereotype that goes with it like a headdress and the whole thing.

She very kindly asked her own chief of the Choctaw Nation to voice a character for us. He is in the series, which is really cool. It's like meeting the president of a country. It was really cool to have him there. Then we also have an episode featuring Aaron Yazzie, who is a Navajo. I think he's an engineer, works at NASA. It was really cool to show off our traditional knowledge of the stars but also someone in the modern space working at NASA using technology and modern sciences to still study the stars. We have some really cool folks coming up that everyone will get to meet.

Melissa Harris-Perry: The Spirit Rangers is premiering Monday, October 10th, which is Indigenous People's Day. Was that purposeful?

Karissa Valencia: It sure was. That holiday has been, oh gosh, always celebrating the history and trauma of Christopher Columbus and what a Indigenous People's Day this will be to have a kids' show out there for native youth who get to see themselves so they don't feel invisible. It'll hopefully give them a sense of pride and acknowledgement that their community is here. Then for non-natives, an opportunity to be a little bit more educated about us and we're welcoming you into our world and hearing our stories. It was absolutely intentional.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Karissa Valencia is head writer and creator of the Netflix series Spirit Rangers. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Karissa Valencia: Thanks, Melissa. This was fun.

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