DC and Marvel have their universes. Some characters have their own multiple timelines, as they live out different destinies simultaneously.
Perhaps Sterlin Harjo has one too.
He is the co-creator of Reservation Dogs, which tells the story of four young Muskogee Creek friends as they cope with the obstacles of growing up on a reservation in Oklahoma -- and as they overcome the grief of their friend's suicide.
I thought of how some of Harjo's works might fit together -- ala DC and Marvel -- when I saw the second episode of the first season, "NDN Clinic." For me, the episode connected to two earlier Harjo films, the short Goodnight, Irene (2005) and the indie feature Barking Water (2009).
The three involve Indian Health Services, and they either complete a narrative arc for Irene or perhaps suggest parallel lives for her.
Casey Camp-Horinek plays Irene in two films, and she is listed as "Grandma" in the Reservation Dogs episode, but I like to think she is Irene there too. In that episode, she calls from her hospital room to Cheese (Lane Factor) as he walks by her door. She calls him "Grandson" and convinces him to take her out of the hospital.
Goodnight, Irene suggests this is the hospital where she dies. The short film's final shot is of Irene walking alone down a long hallway.
Perhaps in one timeline she does die there. Perhaps in another timeline, she is rescued by Cheese.
In the short film, Camp-Horinek plays an older woman who has come to the clinic for her last visit. What she suffers from is not named, but the film suggests she will not be going home. She spends the day with two men in the waiting room. They are not named -- IMDB indicates them as "Young Man" (Robert A. Guthrie) and "Middle-age Man" (Jon Proudstar). She tells them she was married to Pete Harjo, who was apparently a popular barber before he passed away.
In Barking Water, the tables are turned, and she rescues Frankie (Richard Ray Whitman) so he will not die in the same clinic. They were a couple, and despite Frankie's bad behavior then, Irene helps him escape to say goodbye to his daughter and granddaughter.
(Whitman also appears in Reservation Dogs, playing Old Man Fixico. He is not seen with Grandma.)
Although Goodnight, Irene was released before Barking Water, in my reconstruction, its events take place before. Perhaps Irene had an unhappy relationship with Frankie after Pete Harjo died, and then she rescues him from the IHS clinic before going there herself. (Or perhaps this is an alternate timeline in which she never meets Pete.)
Then in "NDN Clinic" she receives the reward she earned by helping Frankie when Cheese rescues her (and becomes her adopted grandson). The episode ends with Cheese and Grandma sitting outside the clinic, enjoying the outdoors, so it does not explicitly depict an escape, but in the final episode of the first season, "Satvrday," he visits Grandma in her home -- she clearly made it out alive.
There are even some call backs or Easter Eggs in "NDN Clinic" that suggest a connection to Goodnight, Irene. (According to IMDB, that is Harjo's first credit as a film director and he also wrote the script.) You can watch it on YouTube here. For instance, when "Middle-Aged Man" checks in at the front desk, he bleeds on the admission form. (The actor also signs his real name, Jon Proudstar.)
When Bear (D'Pharoah Woon-A-Tai) checks in at possibly the same desk in "NDN Clinic," he also bleeds on the form.
Three drops each time. Coincidence? I will let you decide.
Perhaps the biggest Easter Egg is that Middle-age Man tells Irene he has a three-year-old daughter. The same actor plays Leon in Reservation Dogs. He is the father of Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis). Does the little girl mentioned in Goodnight Irene grow up to be the inimitable, laconic, big-hearted Willie Jack?
I think so. At least she does in my SHU.
Addendum (09/08/2022): Theory Confirmed. In the seventh episode of the second season, "Stay Gold, Cheesy Boy," Cheese is lying in a foster care bunk bed and looking at his notebook. For a brief moment, we see this page:
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