People & Power examines the lasting consequences of Canada’s residential school system on Indigenous communities.

This article contains spoilers through season 3 of Reservation Dogs.

At first glance, the scene looks like a well-worn slasher setup: A woman approaches a weathered manor and cautiously crosses the threshold. The frightened look in her eyes signals impending violence, instructing audiences to brace themselves. But in a recent episode of Reservation Dogs, the stellar FX ensemble comedy about a group of Native teens, the typical plotline gets a poignant overhaul. We soon learn that the eerie home, entered by the mysterious Deer Lady (played by Kaniehtiio Horn)—a character based on Native folklore—stands on the same site as the boarding school that she was forced to attend with other Native children.

Over the course of the episode, which was directed by the filmmaker Danis Goulet, the show focuses on the wounds she sustained long before she made it to that creaky porch. Shot in the style of a 1970s art-horror film, these boarding-school scenes paint a terrifying picture of childhood torment. In a prisonlike atmosphere controlled by nuns speaking a garbled language, the young Deer Lady witnesses the shadowy figures commit a slew of escalating abuses: forcibly cutting a Native child’s hair, hitting the students who speak their own language, dragging them out of their beds at night and into a room with a man known cryptically as “Mr. Minor.”

Written by the Reservation Dogs co-creators Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi along with Chad Charlie, who has also acted on the series, this episode, titled “Deer Lady,” is bold and visually arresting, mostly departing from the show’s usual indie-film aesthetics. By framing one character’s story in such a viscerally unnerving style, Reservation Dogs explores the larger, real-life tragedy of the assimilationist boarding schools that have terrorized Indigenous peoples in North America. It’s part of an inspired decision, in the show’s third and final season, to flesh out the backstories of its sprawling ensemble with genre-melding, multi-episode arcs that subtly illustrate the connections between painful events past and present. The elders of Reservation Dogs learn lessons that also shape the future of the teenage protagonists, making this final installment something of a community coming-of-age story.

Before Deer Lady’s journey to the site of her boarding school, she encounters Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), one of the show’s main characters, at a diner where he’s stranded with no way home. In its first two seasons, Reservation Dogs focused on Bear and the rest of the titular crew, all of whom were reeling from the death of their friend Daniel and plotting to make it out of Okern, the town they live in on their Oklahoma reservation. But now that Bear, Cheese (Lane Factor), Elora (Devery Jacobs), and Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis) have returned from last season’s clandestine California trip to honor Daniel, the Rez Dogs are spending a lot more time being supervised by their elders—and, in the process, learning about the histories that have structured reservation life as they know it.

The show has always made room for the adults to reckon with their own issues, and this season, their increased proximity to the teens has brought those ruptures to the fore. In the episode “Maximus,” Bear is hit with a dart while walking through the desert alone and wakes up blindfolded, tied to a chair in an unfamiliar trailer. Reservation Dogs’ episodes frequently zoom in on one main character at a time, and the ones following Bear have generally tended to highlight how resistant he is to acknowledging uncomfortable emotions—or to admitting that he needs other people. Here, Bear gets a glimpse of what his life might be like if he continues on that trajectory: Maximus (Graham Greene), the embattled man holding Bear captive, reveals that he’s from Okern, too, and his time there is partly to blame for a life of loneliness and repeated institutionalization. When police officers descend upon his trailer at the end of the episode, his surrender is unsurprising but wrenching to watch.

[Read: Reservation Dogs is as fresh as it gets]

Using narrative to explore the afterlives of grief is common on television, but part of what makes Reservation Dogs so remarkable is how deftly the series incorporates the stories of elders such as Maximus into the arc of its main characters’ development. By interacting with older generations, the Rez Dogs have grown as young people, as friends, and as members of a community in which many adults haven’t meaningfully confronted their own grief. When he finally makes it home to Okern, Bear’s time with Maximus certainly affects how he interacts with his friends and family. But just as Reservation Dogs grants Deer Lady a weighty backstory, the show also treats Maximus as more than a catalyst to Bear’s growth.

There have been a number of first-rate casting choices on the series throughout its run thus far, but Greene is arguably its most profound: The Oneida actor is widely known for playing the stereotypically taciturn Sioux medicine man Kicking Bird alongside Kevin Costner in Dances With Wolves. (That performance landed him a Best Supporting Actor nod at the 1991 Academy Awards, making him the second Indigenous man to ever be nominated in that category. To date, no acting Oscars have gone to any Indigenous people.) On Reservation Dogs, Greene’s character doesn’t exist solely to help Bear understand his own loneliness; his pain is palpable, and his experiences are treated with care.

Other episodes this season have returned to Maximus and the decades-old roots of his isolation. Last week’s “House Made of Bongs” was a trippy fever dream firmly situated in the ’70s environment that shaped Maximus, paying close and empathetic attention to how he first began drifting as a teenager. This week’s “Frankfurter Sandwich” is a stunning episode that highlights the show’s trademark humor even as it lays bare some of the guilt felt by the reservation’s elder men, who function like well-meaning uncles for the teenagers. As the men relay Maximus’s story to Cheese, they acknowledge for the first time how heavily they feel the loss of the community member they neglected.

These confessions push Cheese, who’d been withdrawing from the Rez Dogs, to reconnect with his friends. And for viewers, who’ve seen Maximus carted away by police as an adult and shunned by his peers as a teenager, watching his former friends grapple with their role in his institutionalization is a layered experience that underscores how sensitively the series maps its narrative. As Reservation Dogs approaches its conclusion, the show’s willingness to confront all of its characters’ pasts—and, by extension, the country’s—still grants it a creative edge that will be worth revisiting once it’s over.

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In the summer of 1619, the leaders of the fledgling Jamestown colony came together as the first general assembly to enact “just Laws for the happy guiding and governing of the people there inhabiting.” Consisting of the governor, Sir George Yeardley; his four councillors; and 22 elected “burgesses,” or representatives, the group approved more than 30 measures. Among them was the nation’s first gun law:

That no man do sell or give any Indians any piece, shot, or powder, or any other arms offensive or defensive, upon pain of being held a traitor to the colony and of being hanged as soon as the fact is proved, without all redemption.

After that early example of gun control came many more laws placing restrictions on the ownership and use of firearms. If guns have always been part of American society, so have gun laws.

This fact might come as a surprise to some gun-rights advocates, who seem to believe that America’s past was one of unregulated gun ownership. That view received a big assist in 2022, when the Supreme Court declared in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen that the constitutionality of modern gun laws depends on whether they are “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” In other words, the constitutional standard for any modern gun law boils down to whether you can find a good precedent for it back in the 1700s or 1800s.

The advocates’ assumption is that such precedents are few and far between, but thanks to the work of researchers and the digitization of archival material, thousands of old gun laws, of every imaginable variety, are now available for reference. Far from being exceptional in American history, gun-control regulations are the default. If Bruen was designed to nullify the constitutional basis for many gun laws, it ought to fail.

[Ryan Busse: One nation under guns]

Because of the constant conflict between Indigenous people and European settlers in the early colonial period, virtually every colony enacted laws similar to Jamestown’s to keep firearms out of the hands of “hostiles,” ineffective as the laws generally were. Over the two centuries that followed, and up to the Civil War, the pervasive fear of enslaved persons’ rebellion prompted many colonies and, later, states to enact laws to prevent their obtaining guns. Gun regulations in the antebellum period, however, were not all about bans: At least 11 states enacted licensing laws that allowed—usually under some form of supervision—enslaved people and free Black people to carry weapons.

Throughout this long period in the history of the republic, up until the beginning of the 20th century, gun laws placed conditions or restrictions on weapons access for a wide variety of citizens—in particular, indentured servants, vagrants, non-Protestants, those who refused to swear an oath of loyalty to the government, felons, foreigners, minors, and those under the influence of alcohol. Numerous laws regulated hunting practices, as well as firearms’ carry, use, storage, and transportation; regulated the manufacture, inspection, storage, and sale of firearms; imposed gun licensing; and restricted dangerous or unusual weapons.

[Adam Serwer: The most baffling argument a Supreme Court justice has ever made]

Despite the Thomas opinion’s claim that “the historical record yields relatively few 18th- and 19th-century ‘sensitive places’ where weapons were altogether prohibited,” some local authorities outlawed the discharge of firearms in or near towns, buildings, or roads, as well as after dark, on Sundays, at public gatherings, and in cemeteries. In some jurisdictions, any use of a firearm that wasted gunpowder was also an offense.

A typical penalty for violations of these laws was some combination of a fine and imprisonment. In the 1700s and 1800s, the period of principal interest to the justices because of the Second Amendment’s adoption in 1791 and the addition of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, a breach of gun-carry and hunting laws could also have resulted in confiscation.

Naturally, some of these laws addressed problems unique to their time. Concerns about conserving gunpowder, for example, were important from the 1600s to the mid-1800s, because its relative scarcity made it a precious substance that was dangerous to keep on hand in any quantity and soon degraded if not properly stored or handled. Other types of laws, though, corresponded much more directly to modern gun regulations.

Take the matter of the carrying of firearms or other dangerous weapons in public. As early as 1686, New Jersey enacted a law against anyone who presumed “privately to wear any pocket pistol, skeines, stilettoes, daggers or dirks, or other unusual or unlawful weapons,” because they induced “great fear and quarrels.” This law also warned the gentry against what we would now call open carry: “No planter shall ride or go armed with sword, pistol or dagger, upon the penalty.” New Hampshire passed a law in 1744 penalizing any unlawful assembly of a dozen or more persons “being armed with clubs, or other weapons,” including firearms, that refused to disperse. Massachusetts followed suit in 1751. Virginia and North Carolina passed similar laws against the open carry of weapons in 1786 and 1792, respectively.

In the post-revolutionary 1800s, as rising violent crime led more people to arm themselves, a total of 42 states (plus the District of Columbia) enacted laws against concealed carry. Three more did so in the early 1900s, so that the total included almost every state in the Union. As many states from the 1700s to 1900s also enacted some form of weapons-licensing law.

That’s not all. Over that same period, at least 22 states restricted any gun carrying, including of long guns. Moreover, across the entire period, three-quarters of the states had laws either against “brandishing”—waving a gun around in a menacing or threatening manner—or merely having a weapon on display in public.

For modern Americans, concealed carry is synonymous with toting a handgun. But in the 1700s and 1800s, a time when single-shot pistols were unreliable and inaccurate, fighting knives were a major concern. The most infamous of these was the bowie knife, named after Jim Bowie, who reputedly killed one man and wounded another using a “big knife” given to him by his brother, Rezin Bowie, in a fight in 1827. Bowie-related mythology was magnified by the adventurer’s death at the Alamo, in Texas, in 1836, which fanned demand for the knife—but also spurred the enactment of laws against its carry. In the 1830s, at least six states passed such laws; by the century’s end, every state but one restricted bowie knives.

[Garrett Epps: Supersizing the Second Amendment]

Another example of a new technology or design that prompted legislation was the trap gun. This was a contraption intended to deter trespassers, poachers, or thieves that was rigged to cause a firearm to go off, usually triggered by a string or wire. A 1771 New Jersey law criminalized the setting of “any loaded Gun in such Manner as that the same shall be intended to go off or discharge itself, or be discharged by any String, Rope, or other Contrivance.” At least 17 other states enacted anti-trap-gun laws from the 1850s to the early 1900s.

As best I can determine, trap guns’ use was relatively rare, but incidents involving them received considerable press attention. A Bangor, Maine, newspaper reported on October 27, 1870, that a burglar who broke into a New York City shop had “the top of his head blown off” by a trap gun. “A few such ‘accidents’ are needed to teach the thieves who have lately been operating in this city, a lesson,” opined the periodical. But most contemporary commentary supported anti-trap-gun laws because of the risk that innocent people could be injured or killed, and because of a revulsion against such vigilante-style justice.

By the end of the 19th century, America was changing dramatically, becoming a majority-urban nation. That shift to an industrial, metropolitan society coincided with the mass production and increased circulation of ever-cheaper and more reliable handguns, leading to a rise in homicides and other gun crimes. The new century was also marked by the advent of modern policing, with greater capabilities to address these growing problems; this development was reflected in a new generation of gun laws aiming to tackle the challenges of public order and safety in American cities. Thus New York’s Sullivan Act—a major provision of which was struck down in the Bruen ruling—came into force in 1911, the year that gave John Browning’s famous semiautomatic-pistol design its name.

[David H. Gans: This Court has revealed conservative originalism to be a hollow shell]

What does this long record amount to? For a start, America’s actual gun-law history collides with its gun mythology: that guns were widely carried and largely unregulated until the rise of the regulatory state in the 20th century. No question, gun ownership is as old as the country—though less widespread and unfettered than our folklore suggests—but so are gun laws.

In addition, even though for much of its history America was an agrarian country, a modern nation-state still in the making, with local governments that possessed few resources and limited power, its lawmakers and enforcers were inventive and determined about ensuring public safety. When they perceived a threat to that order from firearms, they passed laws to restrict or prevent them. And back then, by and large, no court struck those laws down.

That is what is truly consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. So if we accept the originalist premise of Bruen, the actual result should be to render a broad array of gun regulations constitutional.

Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Last week, I put this question to readers: “Donald Trump is guilty of deplorable actions, under indictment for multiple crimes, and yet remains the most popular candidate with voters in the Republican Party’s presidential primary. Why do you think he is still their first choice?”

Replies have been edited for length and clarity.

Randall R. argues that Trump supporters earnestly desire national greatness:

The reason many support Trump (if you have the decency to listen to them) is because they want to make America great again, and there’s no one else close to matching Trump in both prominence and apparent ability to make what they’d say is the most promising and important part of America great, in the face of the internal conflicts that currently exist.

That’s an illusion spread by a politician, offering an addictive thrill that disconnects people from parts of reality. It doesn’t make America great. But making America great, recognizing how it has long been great and how it can be more great, remains important.

Listen to the Trump voters: the neglected, the deplored, the doomscrollers, the people who want to make something of themselves, those who want to raise their family in a better world. Those who vote against Trump fit these same descriptions. It’s essential, for people on opposing sides of what’s become Trump’s divide, to listen to each other with respect, so we can build our way out of America’s problems without being exploited by political operators. You or I have no shortage of illusions in our parts of the political spectrum; shouldn’t we be reexamining those illusions instead of looking down on Trump’s followers?

Bob puts forth a theory of populism:

Populist movements arise from widespread dissatisfaction with cultural and economic conditions and the inability of the government to deal with public concerns. This is fertile ground for charismatic and authoritarian leaders offering quick and simple solutions. Though Trump may be a person of low character, to many of his supporters, he seems like the sort of fighter that is needed—someone who does not follow the rules because the rules are believed to be the problem. James Madison would be sad and disappointed.

Jaleelah analyzes what she sees as the incentives of Trump supporters:

Trump’s supporters sincerely believe that he is being framed, not only because he has been priming them for his conviction for years, but because they have to believe it lest they become severely depressed. Imagine dedicating yourself to a false religion or an unfulfilling career or a bad partner. Imagine losing relationships with your lifelong friends and your adult children who strongly disagree with your choices. When you’ve committed to something at a great cost, it is hard to admit that your commitment was all for nothing.

I don’t think it is strange that so many people insist Trump is innocent. I do, of course, believe he is a fraud who is corrupt enough to have committed the crimes he is accused of. But genuine revolutionary figures get locked up on fake charges all the time. Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi were charged, convicted, and imprisoned. Most reasonable people alive today believe their imprisonments were unjust and that states are capable of fabricating evidence against popular figures who threaten the social order. Trump’s supporters are simply applying a reasonable idea in an unreasonable context.

Liberals and progressives do not seem keen to accept repentant Trump supporters. There is little benefit to switching teams. There is a very high cost. Towns that have unified behind Trump are just as keen on cancel culture as their liberal counterparts. No one wants to be confronted by a horde of their neighbors at church or accused of supporting degeneracy at the grocery store. Peer pressure is probably keeping a lot of people in line.

Dan argues that “most people assume that voters look at a candidate’s record and personality,” but “what really matters is whether a candidate gives a voter an identity.” He explains:

The voters are, because of their support for a candidate, a “somebody.” Trump has done this better than any candidate in 50 years. To voters whose worlds have been destroyed by elites, Trump says: You matter. Become a part of this movement and you are standing up to the elites. You can get your life back with me, and be a SOMEBODY again. Trump’s legal cases are easily rationalized as the price he has been willing to pay, personally, to represent all of the people who see him as validating their lives and giving them identities once again. To his supporters, he is sacrificing for “the cause.”

Christopher scolds Trump’s critics for what he sees as a failure to understand their country:

Trump supporters believe that the economic and cultural game is rigged. Trump supporters disagree with teaching little children about gender or allowing gender-reassignment care to impressionable minors and are branded with a pejorative label for it. They see branding that Florida law as “Don’t say gay”––despite the fact that a majority of Americans would likely support the content and intent of Florida’s efforts to ensure age-appropriate instruction––is wrong. Similarly, when someone supports law enforcement or opposes affirmative action, they are labeled “racists,” even though there are principled reasons to take issue. Trump has tapped into the frustration that comes from playing a rigged game. Trump supporters see Trump as challenging the cultural and economic system that excludes them and their views.

The elites and media need to stop dismissing Trump supporters as some fringe group. Trump received more votes in 2020 than did Obama [in 2008] and came in second in 2020 only to Biden. The 2024 election is likely to be close. The issues Trump has tapped into are not fleeting.

Geoff describes a type of voter he has observed as a retail manager in Colorado, in a store that catered to a Trump-voting demographic:

They are white, working-class, and very knowledgeable about stuff and fixing it, but they don’t value education as it is systematized in America. They are very transgressive in their everyday language but are model citizens overall. The most notable sentiment, for me, was commonly phrased as, “Wouldn’t it be great to vote for a POTUS sitting in prison?!” They defend him out of reaction: It’s “unpopular,” and they are raging against the machine. Think if supporting Nixon was the most “punk rock” thing you could do.

Patricia shares how she became a Democrat and describes some Trump supporters she has observed:

I’m 90 years old, a retired hospital administrator. My late husband and I were brought up in Republican families in California and voted that way until we watched Bill Clinton’s impeachment and witnessed the mean streak and hypocrisy of the Republicans.

We have voted for Democrats ever since.

My co-grandma is currently 89. She immigrated from Argentina at the age of 22, so you’d think she’d recognize authoritarians when she smells them, but no, she likes Trump. She loved watching The Apprentice and watches Fox. And her friends email around crazy stuff they find online. She has a Ph.D. in education and taught at a university for years.

I have a 65-year-old in-law who lives in Orange County, California, and has a successful business. A smart man, but not formally educated. He is a Trump supporter because of taxes mostly.

My granddaughter and her husband recently moved to northern Idaho from the Seattle area because they don’t like the regulations in Washington State. They think Trump is not a nice man but are pretty well aligned with libertarianism—they don’t want government interfering in their freedom, so they think Trump is the only choice. Both are college graduates.

And beyond them, I’ve observed that there are people with a seemingly “genetic” trait who simply enjoy seeing a person “stick it” to others. Trump is exceptionally good at ridicule.

Nick thinks his experience of being young and right-leaning helped him understand support for Trump:

Pre-2016, I identified as a conservative. While in college, if I tried to offer a different opinion on topics such as immigration, I felt ridiculed and looked down upon. I decided my two options were to be met with scorn or to hold my tongue. I know I wasn’t the only one. My good friend started a club to bring liberals and conservatives together to talk about major issues. He did everything he could to get conservatives to show up but just couldn’t get it to happen. I am not surprised because I don’t think I was the only conservative who felt like they couldn’t share out of fear of being “canceled” or called a racist or bigot for not going along with the mainstream liberal line. Perhaps Republicans are rallying around Trump despite his egregious undemocratic and immoral acts because they see themselves in him, a conservative being constantly ridiculed by liberals for his beliefs, except he actually speaks up. I don’t think all conservatives are power-hungry autocrats like Trump, and I don’t think most of them share his views. But I do think that we tend to support someone when we see ourselves in them. Identity politics play in both parties; maybe we’re just seeing the conservative version.    

T. argues that we’re witnessing a reaction to cultural change:

I’m an architect in a progressive city out west. I abhor Donald Trump, but I understand why my in-laws in Tennessee support him without reservation. What’s mystifying to me is that so many bright, liberal folks of my acquaintance don’t grasp it. Do you recall the deafening silence after the 2016 election, when Hillary lost to the worst presidential candidate in American history? There were a couple of months of serious self-examination among Democrats, but it quickly cooled, and I haven’t heard anything like it since.

I think our lack of understanding is due to the inability of most of us to put ourselves into the shoes of disadvantaged Trump voters. What you’d see coming your way is an all-consuming political, economic, and cultural wave––one that represents not only change, but also disdain for your way of life and destruction of your sense of who you are. I’m not saying that’s true, but the impression is very real. It’s cultural imperialism, which we understand very well when we talk about gentrification, but we miss completely when the encroaching force comes from our side of the fence. After all, how would we feel if confronted by a way of life that mocks our religion, siphons up our brightest young people and convinces them we’re hopelessly ignorant, sells us out to the global economy, promotes behavior that’s been taboo for thousands of years, and cancels us if we disagree? It fits with the experience of Indigenous cultures that were overrun by modern industrial society during the past 250 years. Those Tennesseans are being sold a bill of goods by a flimflam man, but we set them up for it.

JP describes the Trump support of his loved ones:

They do not go to Trump rallies, nor do they look or sound like those abhorrent Trump supporters you see in interview-reel compilations. They are compassionate, kind to strangers, and even have friends in people of all political stripes. We are a racially diverse bunch: Black, Hispanic, and white. And yet, these same people believe in their bones that for every lie Donald Trump has told, the liberal media has told more. For every crime Donald Trump has committed, the liberal elites in our politics and culture have committed more.

And regarding his claims of election fraud, despite lack of hard evidence, they feel in their gut that he is right on some level. I doubt I could do or say anything to convince them otherwise.

Paul describes the pull of tribes:

Part of being a human being is wanting to belong. One way we do that is to identify with someone or something. Passionate sports fans are a good example. And once we link our identity, our sense of who we are, to those teams, we look at everything about those teams through a positive perspective. People have identified with Trump and now their well-being and self-image are tied to him. That prevents them from viewing any reality other than the one that he creates. It will take some sort of disruption to break up with him, but it doesn’t look like that will occur. When their identity is at risk, the most comfortable path is to stay with Trump and distort new data to fit their views.

Michael believes that demographic insecurity is a factor:

I suspect that support for Trump is rooted in people’s fears of becoming a minority and suffering economic demise due to competition from immigration by humans who are unlike them.

Tim believes that Trump’s appeal is even simpler:

Give someone a reason to feel good about their anger and resentment and you can gain their loyalty.

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Indigenous leaders, environmentalists welcome protection of more than 404,000 hectares near Grand Canyon National Park.