Sumith Prasad
Netflix’s sports drama film ‘Rez Ball’ chronicles a tumultuous season in the history of Chuska Warriors, a Native American high school basketball team based in Chuska, New Mexico. The players and the coaching staff, led by Coach Heather Hobbs and the star scorer, Jimmy Holiday, aim for the state championship after a series of embarrassing defeats question the team’s capabilities and potential. They also unite to pay homage to Nataanii Jackson, a well-regarded emerging player who kills himself. The Warriors stun not only their rivals but also the entire country after they turn their season around to lay their hands on the state championship!
The Chuska Warriors is Partially Based on the Chinle Wildcats
The origin of the Chuska Warriors can be traced back to the Chinle Wildcats, the basketball team of Chinle High School, located in Chinle, Arizona. Towards the end of the 2010s, sports journalist Michael Powell wrote extensively about the emergence of the Wildcats as a prominent presence in Arizona’s high school basketball division. These accounts are collected in the non-fiction book ‘Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation,’ which serves as the source text of ‘Rez Ball.’ However, the sports drama film is not an exact adaptation of the accounts.
Instead, filmmaker Sydney Freeland wanted to explore the spirit and resilience of the Native American team through a fictional group of players, resulting in the creation of the Chuska Warriors. There are several differences between the two teams. To begin with, the Wildcats’ 2017-2018 season, Powell’s main focus on his book, didn’t start with a suicide that turned the players’ performances around. This particular development is fictional and conceived to address the harsh reality behind the cause of death in Native American communities.
Secondly, the Wildcats didn’t win the state championship like the Warriors at the end of the 2017-2018 season. Despite showing immense promise and commendable resilience, the win streak of Chinle’s stars ended when the Winslow Bulldogs beat the team during the playoffs. Contrary to what the film portrays, the Warriors couldn’t make it into the championship game.
Two Real Institutions in New Mexico Stand in For Chuska High School
It goes without saying that Chuska High School is partially based on Chinle High School, located at 191 US-191 in Chinle, Arizona. However, the production department used two other schools in New Mexico to shoot scenes set in the home of the Chuska Warriors: Santa Fe Indian School and Shiprock High School. Located at 1501 Cerrillos Road in Santa Fe, SFIS is a tribal boarding school affiliated with the Bureau of Indian Education. The establishment began serving the community in 1890. The institution is well known for its painting program, with alumni such as José Vicente Aguilar, Crucita Calabaza, and Allan Houser.
Shiprock High School is located at US-64 in Shiprock. The public school’s athletics programs are impressive, especially the basketball ones. The Shiprock Lady Chieftains won the AAAA New Mexico State Girls Basketball Championship in 2017. For Sydney Freeland, an Indigenous filmmaker, filming her movie mainly on the reservation was important, which explains why she chose these two schools with Indigenous roots. “It’s not ‘City Ball,’ it’s ‘Rez Ball.’ It’s not ‘Studio Ball,’ it’s ‘Rez Ball.’ Thankfully, we were able to make that [filming mainly on the reservation] happen because there are these intangibles to being there in the location with the physical geography. Not to sound cliché, but the location is a character. If you have that as a foundation, all these other things get to come out,” she told Collider.
