‘Big Chief' is a sly debut about drama in Native American politics
My digital review copy of 'Big Chief,' Jon Hickey's ambitious debut novel, came with a letter attached. In it, Hickey introduces himself as an enrolled citizen of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Chippewa Indians who grew up away from his ancestral homeland in northern Wisconsin after his grandparents were forcibly relocated to Chicago. The novel emerged from the experience of feeling estranged from his roots, as well as his observations of Indigenous politics. The letter was earnest and direct, neatly unspooling the author's ties to his material.
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2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Hate crime or neighborhood feud? Everything we know so far about Jonathan Joss's killing
Jonathan Joss's struggles didn't begin when he was shot Sunday night. In the midst of a years-long feud with the man accused of killing him, the actor was self-admittedly dealing with the loss of his house and pets, financial hardships, and substance abuse. These problems are all too present in LGBTQ+ and Indigenous communities and were particularly felt by Joss toward the end of his life. Keep up with the latest in + news and politics. "As we reflect on the recent coverage surrounding Jonathan's final days, we carry this ache like a stone in our chest," the American Indians in Texas at the Spanish Colonial Missions said in a statement. "Public reports describing his distress are heartbreaking, not because they define who he was, but because they point to a more profound crisis that is all too familiar in Native communities: the unspoken, underserved, and ongoing struggle with mental hardship and lateral violence." While the circumstances surrounding his shooting are complicated, one thing remains clear — Joss's death is a tragedy that has deeply impacted queer and Native circles. Here's everything we know about Joss's killing and the events leading up to it. Fox/NBC John Redcorn on 'King of the Hill'; Chief Ken Hotate on 'Parks and Rec' Jonathan Joss, 59, was an out gay Indigenous actor of Apache and Comanche heritage known for his roles in Fox's animated series King of the Hill and NBC's sitcom Parks and Recreation. Joss voiced John Redcorn, a Native American masseur and healer, on King of the Hill, and portrayed Ken Hotate, a Native American chief, on Parks and Recreation. He had reportedly already recorded some of his lines for the upcoming King of the Hill reboot, which will be available in August on Hulu. Joss married his partner, Tristan Kern de Gonzales, 32, on Valentine's Day of this year. The couple had been living in Joss's childhood home in San Antonio, Texas — which his father built for his mother in 1957 — for several years before his death. Joss struggled with addiction throughout his life and had been open about spending time in mental health treatment. He said on the Bwaaa! The King of the Hill Podcast that he was not sober. Recorded one day before his death, the episode would become his last interview. "I've already lost everything. My house burnt down. I ain't going to give up drugs. I ain't going to give up drinking. They're my friends," he said. - YouTube Joss's home burned down in January, resulting in the deaths of his and Kern de Gonzales's three dogs. The couple had been staying in a hotel due to electricity issues after the home was vandalized but returned regularly to take care of the dogs. Upon returning one afternoon, Joss found a blaze had consumed the house. Joss said that he had been using a propane tank inside the house for heat but that he had turned it off before he left. He and Kern de Gonzales soon after launched a GoFundMe to help with their living expenses. "This is a house I grew up in. I'm more concerned about my dog that died, but you know what? The good Lord will protect us,' Joss told local outlet KSAT at the time. 'Mistakes happen, man. And it's my fault for, I guess, leaving something on. Or if somebody came in and did something, who knows?' Joss was often candid on social media about their financial struggles, offering Cameos to earn revenue. He denied a rumor that he started the fire for insurance money, telling the the Bwaaa! podcast hosts that he would never kill his dogs. "My closest friend said, 'Jonathan, we know you set that fire. ... We know you did it for money,'" Joss said. "I said, 'Guys, my dogs ... were there. I would never hurt my dogs. ... I would never light my dogs on fire.'" - YouTube Just two days before his death, Joss interrupted a King of the Hill reunion panel by claiming the fire that destroyed his house was a deliberate act of arson against him because of his sexual orientation. Joss was not invited to the panel, which was meant to be a small gathering of he main cast, but attended in the audience. When one of the actors said of Joss, "We love our guy, Johnny, and so sad he's not here," he revealed himself in the crowd and took a microphone meant for fan questions. 'You were talking about Johnny, and I want to say something about him,' the panel moderator from Variety recalled him saying. 'Our house burnt down three months ago. Because I'm gay." Joss explained the moment on Bwaaa!, saying that he did not initially intend to interrupt the panel but spoke up in the heat of the moment. "The worst thing about not existing in the world is someone ignoring you when they have taken from your culture," he said. Jonathan Joss Kern de Gonzales revealed in a Facebook post that he and Joss were "involved in a shooting" when they returned to the site of their former home to check the mail. He claimed that the fire and the shooting occurred "after over two years of threats from people in the area who repeatedly told us they would set it on fire" and that despite reporting the threats to law enforcement multiple times, "nothing was done." "When we returned to the site to check our mail we discovered the skull of one of our dogs and its harness placed in clear view," Kern de Gonzales wrote. "This caused both of us severe emotional distress. We began yelling and crying in response to the pain of what we saw. While we were doing this a man approached us. He started yelling violent homophobic slurs at us. He then raised a gun from his lap and fired." "Jonathan and I had no weapons. We were not threatening anyone. We were grieving," he continued. "We were standing side by side. When the man fired Jonathan pushed me out of the way. He saved my life." - YouTube Kern de Gonzales later told NBC that he and Joss, after seeing their dead dog's skull placed in front of their burnt down home, believed it to be a message from their neighbors taunting them. In anger, Joss began shouting and walking back and forth in the street with a pitchfork. One neighbor shared a video with KSAT that shows Joss walking with the pitchfork and yelling about half an hour before his death. 'I knew something was going to happen. I wanted to call the police, but he hadn't done anything," she said. Kern de Gonzales said the suspect pulled up in his car several minutes after Joss had returned to his side. Kern de Gonzales said the man called him and his husband "jotos," a Spanish slur for gay people, before shooting Joss. 'I could give two fucks less if me or my husband had 50 pitchforks in every orifice of our body rolling up and down that street like tumbleweed," Kern de Gonzales said. "It don't matter." Bexar County Sheriff's Office via Getty Images Sigfredo Ceja Alvarez's mug shot Sigfredo Ceja Alvarez, 56, was arrested and charged with murder in connection with Joss's killing, telling officers as he was being detained "I shot him," according to the police report. The two neighbors had reportedly been feuding for over a year, with law enforcement frequently being called to Joss's residence to settle their disputes. Alvarez told police in June 2024 that Joss approached his house with a crossbow while calling him racial slurs, though Joss claimed that he walked over to "talk about their dogs fighting with each other." Upon searching Joss's house, officers found a crossbow and confiscated it. Joss accused Alvarez of being the one who burned his home down in January, according to a separate police report via NBC. The officer taking the report wrote, "I have classified this fire to be undetermined in nature at this time but cannot rule out human involvement intentional or unintentional." Alvarez posted his $200,000 bond Monday night, a Bexar County court spokesperson told Yahoo News. He is now under house arrest, during which he is subject to random drug testing and is not allowed to access firearms. NBC Jonathan Joss Multiple neighbors have said that Joss often spoke loudly and behaved erratically but that no violent confrontations had occurred until he was shot. One woman said that Joss and Alvarez would often fire guns on their own property, but never at each other. 'I've been here six years and when we moved in, it was already going on, so it's just been years of feud with these two,' she told the New York Post. 'I'm not taking nobody's side because I do have reports on both of them, but nothing got done. This man should be alive today, but nothing got done.' The neighbor who took the video of Joss with the pitchfork also said that he "was always yelling at the top of his lungs." She explained, "He would say that all the children on this street were going to die, and that we were all going to go to hell because we're sinners and God is on his side.' Another neighbor told San Antonio TV station WOAI that she had seen Joss outside minutes before his death and that he seemed upset about something. She said that he and his husband "had been repeatedly harassed because they were gay and their home was burned down after years of threats from neighbors." The San Antonio Police Department released a statement shortly after Joss's death claiming it had uncovered "no evidence" to suggest that the killing was a hate crime, which his husband's statement contested. The department later retracted its comments. Police Chief William McManus walked back the statement at a press conference Thursday while also apologizing to the LGBTQ+ community for dismissing their concerns, saying "it was way too early in the process for any statement of that nature to be issued." "We understand that many in the LBGTQ+ [sic] community are feeling anxious and concerned," McManus said. "A lot of that has to do with that premature statement that we released, and again, I own that. We shouldn't have done it. The loss of Jonathan Joss was tragic and most heavily felt by the LBGTQ+ [sic] community." McManus also clarified that the police department doesn't charge hate crimes in Texas. Instead, police "gather the facts and we give those facts to the district attorney's office; then that hate-crime designation is determined at sentencing." Kern de Gonzales had asserted in his Facebook post that throughout their time living at Joss's family home as a couple, they "were harassed regularly by individuals who made it clear they did not accept our relationship. Much of the harassment was openly homophobic." "He was murdered by someone who could not stand the sight of two men loving each other," he said. Screenshot from @prattprattpratt on Instagram Chris Pratt tribute to Jonathan Joss Several of Joss's colleagues from King of the Hill and Parks and Recreation have posted messages mourning the actor. The official social media accounts for the shows have also posted tributes. King of the Hill creators Mike Judge and Greg Daniels and current showrunner Saladin Patterson released a statement on the show's Instagram page saying that "his voice will be missed at King of the Hill, and we extend our deepest condolences to Jonathan's friends and family." Toby Huss, who voiced Kahn Souphanousinphone and Cotton Hill on King of the Hill, wrote on Instagram Story in reaction to the news,"RIP old friend. Godspeed." Chris Pratt, who played Andy Dwyer on Parks and Recreation, also posted a message to his story, which read, "Damn. RIP Jonathan. Always such a kind dude. He played Ken Hotate in Parks and was also in Mag 7 [The Magnificent Seven]. Sad to see. Prayers up. Hug your loved ones." Nick Offerman, who played Ron Swanson on Parks and Recreation, told People that the cast had been texting about the news and were all "heartbroken." He added,"Jonathan was such a sweet guy and we loved having him as our Chief Ken Hotate. A terrible tragedy."
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
'We Are Guardians' is a window into on-the-ground efforts to save the Amazon rainforest
It's easy to forget sometimes that, alongside everything else that's crowding your news brain right now, deforestation in the Amazon is still a massive crisis for the planet, one that is fast reaching a point of no return regarding our ability to curtail its terrible impact. Movies love superheroes that take on their villains with big-stage swagger. But documentaries thrive on underdogs and when it comes to standing up to the illegal logging and mining that's flattening South America's leafy canopy, Indigenous people have more than shown their mettle against buzzing chainsaws or buzzy politicians. The energetic dispatch 'We Are Guardians' from directors Edivan Guajajara, Chelsea Greene and Rob Grobman, is the latest advocacy feature to bring cameras into the Amazon to juxtapose beauty and devastation — as well as a David vs. Goliath battle as it's experienced on the ground. We meet soft-spoken family man Marҫal, from the Indigenous territory of Arariboia, whose decades-old group of organized, unpaid, weapons-trained and face-painted 'forest guardians' take the fight directly to loggers, wherever they can sneak up on them, at great risk to their lives. (Their foes are armed too.) Though Marçal speaks eloquently of his holistic view of their mission — he's protecting the water, the trees and the region's wildlife — he also shows concern that the Amazon's uncontacted peoples stay free of interference too. Read more: The 27 best movie theaters in Los Angeles Meanwhile, activist Puyr Tembé from the Alto Rio Guama territory is working hard to get more Indigenous women into politics and in seats of power — a tall order at a time (filming mostly took place between 2019 and 2022) when rapaciously pro-agribusiness Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro openly treated the rights of Indigenous peoples as dismissable and a nuisance. As Tembé articulates, it takes a reforesting of the mind and heart to catalyze progress. These dedicated warriors certainly earn our admiration in the good/evil binary of the conflict, but complications help give the documentary shape, as in the attention given a crusty logger named Valdir, who agreed to be featured on camera. A logger for over 50 years since he was 8, he knows exactly what's wrong with his job, but is trapped in the maw of an industry as a means of survival for his family. Even a wealthy landowner can come off like a victim here, as is the case with Tadeu, a businessman who in the 1990s started an ecological sanctuary on his 28,000 hectares, and whose complaints to the Brazilian government about illegal encroachment on his land fall on deaf ears. There's a comprehensiveness to how 'We Are Guardians' lays out a big, knotty problem of environment, politics, geography and business — internationalized yet hyper-local — while spotlighting the Indigenous push-back efforts. But the movie's verité style of thumbnail portraiture doesn't always dovetail neatly with the other elements: the unloading of facts, getting those drone shots in and projecting a thriller-like atmosphere. Coming on the heels of the aesthetically sharp and immersive 'The Territory' from a couple years ago (which covers some of the same ground), 'We Are Guardians' feels more like a highlighting of issues than a documentary journey that takes you somewhere. But sometimes, it's whatever gets out the message, right? When it comes to climate change, our media diet is starved. So if you need that refresher course in the importance of saving the Amazon, 'We Are Guardians,' like a well-made pamphlet, does the job with plenty of efficiency and heat. Sign up for Indie Focus, a weekly newsletter about movies and what's going on in the wild world of cinema. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
5 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
‘We Are Guardians' is a window into on-the-ground efforts to save the Amazon rainforest
It's easy to forget sometimes that, alongside everything else that's crowding your news brain right now, deforestation in the Amazon is still a massive crisis for the planet, one that is fast reaching a point of no return regarding our ability to curtail its terrible impact. Movies love superheroes that take on their villains with big-stage swagger. But documentaries thrive on underdogs and when it comes to standing up to the illegal logging and mining that's flattening South America's leafy canopy, Indigenous people have more than shown their mettle against buzzing chainsaws or buzzy politicians. The energetic dispatch 'We Are Guardians' from directors Edivan Guajajara, Chelsea Greene and Rob Grobman, is the latest advocacy feature to bring cameras into the Amazon to juxtapose beauty and devastation — as well as a David vs. Goliath battle as it's experienced on the ground. We meet soft-spoken family man Marҫal, from the Indigenous territory of Arariboia, whose decades-old group of organized, unpaid, weapons-trained and face-painted 'forest guardians' take the fight directly to loggers, wherever they can sneak up on them, at great risk to their lives. (Their foes are armed too.) Though Marçal speaks eloquently of his holistic view of their mission — he's protecting the water, the trees and the region's wildlife — he also shows concern that the Amazon's uncontacted peoples stay free of interference too. Meanwhile, activist Puyr Tembé from the Alto Rio Guama territory is working hard to get more Indigenous women into politics and in seats of power — a tall order at a time (filming mostly took place between 2019 and 2022) when rapaciously pro-agribusiness Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro openly treated the rights of Indigenous peoples as dismissable and a nuisance. As Tembé articulates, it takes a reforesting of the mind and heart to catalyze progress. These dedicated warriors certainly earn our admiration in the good/evil binary of the conflict, but complications help give the documentary shape, as in the attention given a crusty logger named Valdir, who agreed to be featured on camera. A logger for over 50 years since he was 8, he knows exactly what's wrong with his job, but is trapped in the maw of an industry as a means of survival for his family. Even a wealthy landowner can come off like a victim here, as is the case with Tadeu, a businessman who in the 1990s started an ecological sanctuary on his 28,000 hectares, and whose complaints to the Brazilian government about illegal encroachment on his land fall on deaf ears. There's a comprehensiveness to how 'We Are Guardians' lays out a big, knotty problem of environment, politics, geography and business — internationalized yet hyper-local — while spotlighting the Indigenous push-back efforts. But the movie's verité style of thumbnail portraiture doesn't always dovetail neatly with the other elements: the unloading of facts, getting those drone shots in and projecting a thriller-like atmosphere. Coming on the heels of the aesthetically sharp and immersive 'The Territory' from a couple years ago (which covers some of the same ground), 'We Are Guardians' feels more like a highlighting of issues than a documentary journey that takes you somewhere. But sometimes, it's whatever gets out the message, right? When it comes to climate change, our media diet is starved. So if you need that refresher course in the importance of saving the Amazon, 'We Are Guardians,' like a well-made pamphlet, does the job with plenty of efficiency and heat.
