Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone prequel, 1923, is a story that embodies many things; one of the most important is Native American history and identity, told through several lenses and avenues of truth, experience, and heartache. Aminah Nieves embodies one of the most heartwrenching stories of the Yellowverse so far, portraying Teonna Rainwater, an Indigenous student at a Catholic residential school, which serves more as a guise for ᴀʙᴜsᴇ than a beacon of education.
What’s really being taught at the school is how these young women must lose their identities altogether — not just to integrate into mainstream society, but literally to survive. Nieves says it’s an honor to play the role of Teonna; she’s lending her voice, talent, and her pain for what she calls a collective story. Teonna is many things, and the story she represents will resonate with many people.
“It’s an honor to be here and be a part of something of this magnitude, but it’s a way deeper honor because of what I get to do for indigenous peoples and my family because it’s not one story; it’s a collective story. She is not only Teonna — she’s your mother, your father, your grandma; she is us.”
Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, and Jerome Flynn echoed Nieves’ sentiments in saying that 1923 is a piece of modern storytelling bringing history to life. Flynn also noted that it’s something we’ve not seen much of in popular culture.
Teonna’s story is as heartbreaking as it is brutal; she’s been subject to severe ᴀʙᴜsᴇ at the hands of Father Renaud, Sister Mary, and the other sisters in the school. On one occasion, Sister Mary says her goal is to “ᴋɪʟʟ the Indian” in Teonna. This is a reference to a statement by Capt. Richard Pratt, a military officer who offered the following opinion during a speech in 1892:
“A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. ᴋɪʟʟ the Indian in him, and save the man.”
Pratt was the founder and superintendent at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the first U.S. government-run boarding school for Native American children. Teonna is learning that if the school can’t remove their Native culture from the students, they simply rid the world of them completely, a fate Teonnna began to realize after “graduates” from the school never contacted them again.
It’s a hard-to-watch story, but an important one — a tale deeply interwoven into the history of this country. Mo Brings Plenty, an Oglala Lakota actor who portrays Mo to life in Yellowstone and also serves as an American Indian Affairs Coordinator for 1923, says that the issues being brought to life are issues that impact us all — they’re issues that touch on all of our stories. We’re not immune to the depth they carry just because we’ve not experienced them ourselves.
“This show is bringing to light, not just a Native issue; it’s a human being issue.”
When we last saw Teonna, she was escaping from the school and making a last-ditch effort to save her own life, but it’s clear that the pain she’s experienced isn’t over now that she’s existing outside its walls. No, the journey she’s on is just beginning, and there will be ups and downs throughout the rest of it, as Nieves promises.
“It’s a story that deserves to be heard because accountability needs to be had. These traumas are something that indigenous peoples face day to day, so expect all the feelings because the journey is just beginning.”