Lingít and Dena’ina writer and playwright Vera Starbard recently clinched her fourth Emmy nomination for the PBS Kids show, “Molly of Denali.” She was nominated for Outstanding Writing for a Preschool Animated Series for an episode called “Thanks-for-giving.”
The episode aired last November and follows Molly and her friends as they learn why some Alaska Native people don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.
Starbard, who is currently Alaska’s State Writer Laureate, said she’d been pitching the episode since early in the show’s creation.
“It was sort of a, ‘let me at it,’” she said. “You know, I want to tell a Thanksgiving episode from a Native perspective. I don’t personally celebrate Thanksgiving.”
In the episode, Grandpa Nat, Molly’s grandfather, talks about why he doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving and calls it a time of mourning. He talks about “new people” who outlawed many Indigenous traditions and destroyed different cultural pieces.
“Ah, sometimes people do awful things when they don’t understand other people’s way of life,” he says in the episode. “Remembering it makes my heart feel heavy.”
Starbard said the scene explaining that traditions were outlawed was the core of what she wanted to convey with the story.
“It wasn’t something lost, like I think when we hear about it, it’s as if we forgot it, that Native people just sort of blacked it out for some reason. It was taken from us,” she said. “It was very forcefully and violently taken from us. And that is difficult to do in a show like ‘Molly’ when you’re trying to, you know, talk to four year olds and eight year olds. You don’t want to re-traumatize people with it, but you do want to tell the truth, and you want to tell the full truth that really hasn’t been told to us in our history books.“
In the rest of the episode, Molly and her friends host a community-wide celebration highlighting Alaska Native traditions. That includes time to mourn. In the episode, Molly asks her aunt about it.
“How can you be sad and celebrate?” Molly asks.
“When we remember our ancestors together and talk about what was lost, we know we’re not alone,” Auntie Merna replies. “Then we can all heal together and celebrate what we have.”
Communal grieving through ceremonies like a Lingít ku.éex’ — also known as a potlatch — was also outlawed. Starbard said she wanted to bring that into the show.
“I don’t see many people talking about communal grief outside of Native communities,” Starbard said. “I think Native communities, we talk about it a lot, and I don’t see that many other places. This, to me, was a gift the Native people could give the rest of the world. This is how you grieve together, and it’s a good thing to grieve together.”
Starbard said this fourth nomination means a lot to her. But it’s a bittersweet moment. She thought about her dad when she learned she was nominated again. She brought her mom and sister to the Emmy ceremony for her previous nomination and wished she could have brought her dad as well.
“He had said, ‘Oh, but next time you’re nominated, I’ll go to that one.’ And he passed away a couple months ago, and that was definitely on my mind, just that he was so confident that I would be nominated again for my work, but also sad that he can’t be there,” she said.
The winner of Outstanding Writing for a Preschool Animated Series will be announced at the Children’s & Family Emmy Award ceremony March 2.
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