Osage professor helps renovate ‘Little House on the Prairie’

LAWRENCE — Robert Warrior remembers the book series and classic TV show “Little House on the Prairie” with a mix of fondness and unease.

On the one hand, he said he enjoyed Laura Ingalls Wilder’s empowering tales about her frontier family. On the other, he was uncomfortable with their portrayal of the Osage Nation, of which he is a member/citizen.

“I grew up in Kansas, so I knew the books pretty well, not through my own reading of them but by the girls in my schools reading them. It was something that was definitely part of my social landscape,” said Warrior, the Hall Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Kansas.

He now has some say in how “Little House on the Prairie” gets depicted.

Warrior is a story consultant on the new Netflix adaptation of the show and appears as an actor in an episode. Already the series was the No. 1 most-watched program on the streaming network during the week of its July 9 premiere.

“I read versions of every script of the eight episodes before they got sent to Netflix for final approval,” Warrior said.

“I had a good relationship with the showrunner, Rebecca Sonnenshine, and I felt like I was adding something to the process. I told them that I was not there to merely say, ‘This is right, this is wrong, this is authentic, this is not authentic.’ They were interested more in my perspective. If I have any sort of creative talent in this process, it is in fixing story problems.”

Part of the challenge for the new “Little House on the Prairie” was to balance historical accuracy with modern expectations of representation and diversity. It also still had to fit within the parameters (or limitations) of a Hollywood production.

“I was trying to help Rebecca and the producers find a story nexus for why there is an Osage character that Laura and her family get to know,” he said.

“Their paths have to cross. My problem as a consultant starting out was having the producers imagining, ‘OK, you come across a campfire, and there’s a group of Native Americans doing something.’ Are they singing? Are they dancing? Are they eating? What are they doing? And I said that’s going to be a really hard story to tell because almost none of those people around that campfire speak any English.”

The first season (which is a loose adaptation of the third book) finds the Ingalls family moving from Wisconsin to Independence, Kansas.

He said, “In our series, the railroad industry people are trying to flood the zone with settlers so that they will be able to get easement through the Osage Reservation. The easiest way to do that is to get rid of the Osage Reservation and have it open for settlement. So the railroad puts up fliers in Northern states that say, ‘Free land in Kansas.’”

Warrior became involved with the project when Nicole Harjo, a senior vice president for development at Paramount Studios — who is considered one of the most influential Native Americans in the TV industry —was specifically looking for an Osage consultant.

“I’ve had that relationship to this kind of media consulting for non-Indigenous media taking on Indigenous topics for over 30 years,” Warrior said. 

Although initially apprehensive, he said his interest was piqued when he discovered Joy Gorman Wettels was attached as an executive producer.

“She produced ‘13 Reasons Why’ on Netflix. I have kids who are of the age who watched the show when it came out. I found it to be really compelling,” he said.

Filming of “Little House on the Prairie” began last summer in Winnipeg, Canada. Warrior spent five days there, including three on the set. Producers credited him as a “Special Skills Extra,” placing him into episode seven of the eight-part series. He portrays a member of the entourage of Osage leader Governor Joe, who is played by Talee Redcorn (cousin of Alex Red Corn, director and associate professor of Indigenous studies at KU).

A KU faculty member since 2016, Warrior is the past president of the American Studies Association and a founding president of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. He was the founding co-editor of the journal Native American and Indigenous Studies and edits the Indigenous Americas series at the University of Minnesota Press.

Warrior said he happened to once meet original “Little House on the Prairie” star Melissa Gilbert back in the 1980s while he was in college.

“Our choir at Pepperdine University did a fundraiser that stars were a part of. Melissa Gilbert thanked each of us. She was very nice,” he said.

Warrior said that part of his role as a scholar is to teach people to be more critical of what they’re seeing and experiencing.

“I hope those who read the books are now able to see more points of view than are represented in the books,” he said of the new version.

“It can be done in ways that are organic and are good storytelling, and they add value to a story that people are already familiar with. It wouldn’t have undermined Laura Ingalls Wilder’s understanding of her own history to have included those viewpoints.”