"We are the original stewards of this land": "Spirit Rangers" boss on imagining Native park rangers

With a series premiering on Indigenous Peoples' Day, Karissa Valencia is part of an important team, what she calls the "Native Avengers of Hollywood." Valencia is the creator, showrunner and executive producer of "Spirit Rangers," a new animated show on Netflix.  

"Spirit Rangers" follows siblings Kodi (Wačíŋyeya Iwáš'aka Yracheta), Summer (Isis Celilo Rogers) and Eddy Skycedar (Talon Proc Alford) whose parents (Kimberly Guerrero as Mom and John Timothy as Dad) are both park rangers at a fictional national park in California. Promoted by their parents to Junior Rangers, the kids also have a secret: they can transform into spirits with super powers in order to protect the park and help the creatures who call it home. Kodi's Spirit Ranger is a grizzly bear cub, sister Summer's is a red-tailed hawk and the baby of the family, Eddy, transforms into a turtle.

All the animals have meaning for Valencia, who is a Santa Ynez Chumash tribal member and the first California Native American showrunner. Not only does "Spirit Rangers" have an all-Native writers' room, the show's actors, artists, composers, choreographers, sound designers and more are Indigenous. 

Valencia got her start as an intern with Nickelodeon (what the network calls "NICKterns"). Her first job in Hollywood? "Helping my boss send out all the rejection letters of these people who entered the writing program . . . It was three months of work folding and stuffing those envelopes, telling everybody they didn't get in. But despite seeing how hard this was going to be for me to chase this dream, I still just had the burning desire to be a writer."

"Spirit Rangers" is the culmination of that dream, showcasing multiple tribal stories, languages and imagery, with the permission and collaboration of the Chumash and Cowlitz communities. Salon talked to Valencia about her childhood, national parks and the importance of Native storytelling.

This interview has been ledited for length and clarity.

What are the Spirit Rangers? How would you describe them to people?

Our Spirit Rangers have the special ability to transform into their own spirit and enter Spirit Park, which is like the Indigenous filter over a national park. So, when they're in Spirit Park, they get to see that all the trees are alive. They get to see that a thunderstorm is actually a family of Thunderbirds. They really get to connect with their culture this way. But also, they get to connect with the environment this way too and see that we are all alive and connected and deserve respect. And if there's a reason for a flood or you're going to squish that spider, you have to think twice about it.

What inspired the show?

It was inspired by my time growing up on the reservation in Santa Ynez. I heard all sorts of stories of our animals and land, how the condor got its black feathers or how the sun got in the sky, very "Grimms' Fairy Tales"-esque, which is perfect for the preschool space with those universal lessons of friendship and community.

All clicked when I was at my tribe's bear ceremony one year and saw one of our bear dancers wearing the skin and dancing. It's just so beautiful and just felt magical . . . I was thinking, "What if a little kid found that bear skin and they could turn into a bear?" Not all tribes believe in the transformation aspect, but mine does. We do. We have bear doctors who had been led to believe that they can transform into bears. So that was Kodi. That was the first one that came. And I'm a big fan of the superhero genre kind of stuff, so I wanted to have a trio of siblings and pick those animals based on land, air and water.

Wačíŋyeya Iwáš'aka Yracheta as Kodi Skycedar, Talon Proc Alford as Eddy Skycedar and Isis Celilo Rogers as Summer Skycedar in "Spirit Rangers" (Courtesy of Netflix)I knew I had Kodi and then Summer for air as a red-tailed hawk and then Eddy turtle for our water animal, so they could each have their own unique powers.

I was going to ask you about how you chose the different animals.

I wanted those animals because they were California specific, but also as a story narrative. How can we differentiate them and make sure we're highlighting all the different areas? Land, air and water.

Eddy the turtle was my favorite. There's a line where he says something like, "I'm just a kid, and a turtle." Were there specific stories from your childhood that ended up finding their way into the story?

Yes, there's been a few, which is really, really special. The second episode, right out the gate: a snoozing sun. Condors are really important to the Chumash. We have a story of the condor getting his black feathers and it's a little bit more gruesome, very "Grimm's Fairy Tales"-esque again where we have to adapt it for the modern kid today, but still show how he got his black feathers getting too close to the sun. So, that was a really fun task for me to adapt the story into a modern space while still celebrating my culture. Things like that make me so, so happy to see it — from just hearing it as a kid growing up to now it exists somewhere and we get to tell it to all kinds of families, not just Indigenous ones.

What inspired the national park in the show? I love that it's there and that the parents are park rangers. Were parks meaningful to you growing up as well?

They were. I feel so lucky to have been growing up in California and have been to all of our national parks. I'm such a fan. They are snapshots of the world or of our state pre-colonization and they're just so beautiful . . . My dad would take us fishing and hiking and he could name every tree, every flower, spot a track in the mud. He knows the land like the back of his hand because we are the original stewards of this land. 

Kimberly Guerrero as Mom, Talon Proc Alford as Eddy Skycedar, Isis Celilo Rogers as Summer Skycedar and Wačíŋyeya Iwáš'aka Yracheta as Kodi Skycedar in "Spirit Rangers" (Courtesy of Netflix)And when I was thinking about "Spirit Rangers," I had realized that I had never met an Indigenous park ranger. That is crazy to me because we have this traditional ecological knowledge that dates back so far. So, in my dream world, there is a family of park rangers taking care of this California national park. And it was a cool way to show a Native family in the modern space and using technology, wearing hiking boots and taking care of our animals — but also for kids, what a great entry point to have a little uniform and all the gadgets that go with being a Junior Park Ranger. As soon as that piece clicked, I thought, "Oh, there's the show." 

It's also a very beautiful show. It's bright, it's colorful. Were you involved in the aesthetics at all or was it important for you to have that brightness to it?

I remember pitching what I wanted Spirit Park to look like. I really wanted to see the human world look more realistic because I just wanted to see Native families in a more modern sense. Not as stylized or anything like that. But when we got to Spirit Park, that was where I wanted it to go psychedelic, all the colors. Every spirit, their tribal prints are from whatever region they're from. So, coyote and lizard have all this rock art on them because they're California natives. I wanted to have all that detail in this series . . . Our art director, Marie Delmas, was ready for the challenge. She took all of this and somehow, because I feel like all those colors can get tough on the eyes and it might not look good, but she found a beautiful balance where it just looks cinematic and special and doesn't just feel like rainbow garbage for a lack of better word. But she has really brought all the colors to life. 

Shaun Taylor-Corbett as Coyote and Cree Summer as Lizard in "Spirit Rangers" (Courtesy of Netflix)Was it important for you to take back the transformation? That's something that white people appropriate and misuse all the time still. Is that something that you were thinking about?

Yes, absolutely. And thank you for asking this question. When Netflix bought "Spirit Rangers," I remember they did a slate announcement just like, 'What's coming up?' We had nothing. It was a 30-second, This is what "Spirit Rangers" is. And I had folks at Netflix, who I had never met before, reach out to me and just say they were so concerned that I was being racist towards the Indigenous community. Which was crazy to me because my first question was, "Well, are you Indigenous?" And no, they are not.

I think just because Hollywood has portrayed it in such a way, that doesn't mean that we still can't tell our own stories.  Because our magic is awesome, our stories are cool. Hollywood has long been fascinated by them. And it's like for the first time we get to finally tell those stories ourselves. So, while people might get a little prickly seeing the transformation of it all, when they learn that it's steeped in such Indigenous lore and collaboration directly with tribes, it feels different. This transformation and what they're experiencing when they get to Spirit Park is not what we've seen before. Because it's based in our traditional stories.

Condor in "Spirit Rangers" (Netflix)

What was your writers' room like, working with all-Native writers?

Our writers' room means a lot to me. The writers' room is the heart of any TV show, really. It's a space where I'm really happy we had an all-Native writing staff because all of our experiences are so different while we're so similar and didn't have to stop and explain anything to anybody. That was very nice. We all got to just learn from each other. My writing staff was from all corners of the country. I'm just really grateful that they felt that we were in a space where they could be vulnerable and share those stories of what it was like being a Native kid. What were the hard days? What were the joys of being Native? And putting that all together to create the most colorful, modern Indigenous family. I think that's what makes it so special. Because I'm just one person and I'm not queen Native. I definitely wanted to have multiple perspectives, learning from everyone's experience and bringing it to the show.

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Is there a favorite story that you've told in "Spirit Rangers" or have yet to tell?

Honestly, that second episode: snoozing sun and the condor means a lot. That's the one that I grew up with as a kid. I also love hearing the Samala language in the series. Our language is so fragile, [in danger] of being lost. And just to know that it'll exist in a show like "Spirit Rangers," hearing it in the underscore, hearing our kids say 'Haku.' That stuff really warms my heart.

"Spirit Rangers" is now streaming on Netflix. View the trailer via YouTube below: