With Reservation Dogs, Sterlin Harjo Upended All of TV’s Old Rules

After spending most of his career as an independent filmmaker, Sterlin Harjo had grown accustomed to the routine of debuting his movies at small film festivals, “and then they kind of die on the vine after that, and no one gets to see them,” he recalls. So Harjo kept expectations low for his first TV creation, FX on Hulu’s Reservation Dogs, about four Indigenous teenagers coming of age in a rural Oklahoma town: “I just thought, well, I hope at least a few people watch it and like it.”