People of the West — Season 1, Episode 5: Reservations
59 min • 1 season, 10 episodes
Episode synopsis
Chief Tenaya leads the Ahwahneechee in a desperate stand to defend Yosemite from James Savage and the Mariposa Battalion. Raids on trading posts spark all-out war, and federal treaty commissioners move to strip Native nations of their homelands, forcing them onto barren reservations. In the struggle between survival and surrender, Tenaya resists through strategy and defiance. Rather than a story of pioneers taming wilderness, this chapter reveals Native determination to protect home and homeland against relentless conquest.
About People of the West
People of the West is a ten-part premium documentary series that reclaims the history of California through Indigenous perspectives. Blending oral histories, tribal archives, expert insight, and cinematic recreations, the series spans from creation stories and pre-contact life through colonization, state-sponsored violence, resistance, and cultural survival. Each episode centers Native voices and lived experience, reframing well-known events—from the mission system and Gold Rush to Alcatraz and modern sovereignty movements—through those who endured them. Visually ambitious and emotionally grounded, the series pairs sweeping landscapes with intimate storytelling to reveal California as it has always been: Native land. Designed to live both on screen and in classrooms, People of the West offers a corrective to dominant narratives while highlighting the resilience, continuity, and contemporary presence of Native nations shaping the state today.