Leah Millis/Reuters

President Joe Biden, with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona at his side, responds to questions after making remarks about forgiving federal student loan debt, in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, Aug. 24, 2022.

President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt for millions of Americans represents an attempt to find middle ground on a huge issue the administration has struggled with ever since assuming office 19 months ago.

The core dilemma, for both Biden officials and the continuing public debate over loan forgiveness, might be summed up with a simple question: What is fair?

Opponents say that in this case, using money from all taxpayers to provide targeted relief to a few individuals, isn’t fair at all. Those individuals incurred their debt freely. What about past generations of students who tightened belts to pay for higher education? And won’t another round of government fiscal stimulus overheat the economy?

There’s some dispute about what the macroeconomic effect of Mr. Biden’s plan might be, says Steven Teles, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, who cautions that he’s not an economist. “But it’s hard to see how it’s not inflationary.”

Supporters hold that it’s fair to help borrowers battered by fast-rising college costs, falling public investment in schools, and too-often predatory educational institutions. Targeted loan relief could help ease racial disparities in the economy, they say.

School debt can persist long after borrowers enter the workforce, add supporters of the Biden plan. Relief could help millions improve their lives.

Ellyse Marques, an environmental consultant in Gainesville, Virginia, graduated from college in December 2020. She had $20,000 in student debt, which she’s since paid down to $12,000.

Student loans are her biggest financial burden. She and her new spouse have been thinking about buying a house, and loan relief might make that possible.

“I feel great about it because I just got married and my husband and I are trying to plan our future and plan finances,” Ms. Marques says.

The Biden plan

The plan outlined by President Biden at the White House Wednesday would cancel $10,000 in federal student loan debt for individuals with incomes under $125,000 a year or for couples with incomes under $250,000 a year. In addition, those with federal Pell Grants, which are awarded to undergraduates with an exceptional financial need, are eligible for $20,000 in loan forgiveness.

The plan also aims to make loans more manageable for students in the future. Monthly loan payments would be capped at 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income, down from the current 10%. It calls for the government to cover the monthly interest for those making minimum payments, so that the total amount owed would not balloon far past the amount borrowed over months and years.

The plan also extends until the end of the year a moratorium on loan payments that the government put in place at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Payments are scheduled to restart in January 2023.

Overall, the Biden approach to student loan relief is far short of what liberals have been pressuring him to do for over a year since he took office. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and others have called for canceling up to $50,000 of debt per borrower, essentially wiping out much of the total $1.6 trillion in loans owed by more than 45 million borrowers.

By making Pell Grant recipients eligible for more loan forgiveness, however, President Biden is trying to at least partially meet liberals’ desire to provide extra help for low-income and Black borrowers. About 60% of school loan borrowers also receive Pell Grants, and the majority come from families making less than $30,000.

Black school loan borrowers are more than twice as likely to have received Pell Grants as their white peers, according to the White House.

“I understand that not everything I’m announcing ... is going to make everybody happy,” Mr. Biden said Wednesday. “But I believe my plan is responsible and fair.”

“Resources that could be better used”

Republicans and some moderate Democrats differ about the plan’s fairness. They note that only about 42% of Americans have a college degree. A similar percentage of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 are enrolled in a four-year degree program at any one time.

All taxpayers would thus share the burden of paying for a move that only benefits a slice of the total population.

The program would also be expensive, with cost estimates of $300 billion to $600 billion, depending on how many people sign up. Colleges could take advantage of their students’ debt relief by simply raising their price.

“Student loan debt relief is spending that raises demand and increases inflation. It consumes resources that could be better used helping those who did not, for whatever reason, have the chance to attend college,” Lawrence Summers, secretary of the Treasury under President Bill Clinton and director of the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama, tweeted earlier this week.

It is also not clear that the Biden administration has the legal authority to put the program in place.

Mr. Biden is relying on executive actions, rather than congressional legislation, to forgive the student loans. But earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency that the federal government can’t act on programs of broad economic significance without congressional authority.

In part the administration is basing its legal authority on emergency powers derived from the COVID-19 crisis. It’s a novel approach that could be vulnerable to court action.

“I think the thing that should be striking about it is just the sheer scale of what they’ve done ... on a spending commitment in the absence of any appropriation or legislative action whatsoever. At the least, it’s extremely unorthodox,” says Dr. Teles of Johns Hopkins.

A crisis caused by declining state support?

But in the end the Biden plan is addressing a real, acute crisis, say supporters. School loan debt is the second-largest kind of household debt in the country, behind mortgages. It’s the only kind of consumer debt that’s been increasing steadily since before the 2008 Great Recession.

Some of it funds professional graduate schools, such as law school, that can produce students with good economic prospects. Some of it also funds less remunerative degrees, or the first undergraduates in a family, or students who don’t get a degree. People are thrown into the lower rungs of the workforce with tens of thousands of dollars in debt strapped to their backs.

“It’s growing much faster than other types of debt, and there doesn’t really seem to be any indication that that’s going to stop,” says Raphael Charron-Chenier, assistant professor of sociology at Arizona State University. “It’s a crisis now, given the size that it is and when it gets people in the life course.”

One reason student debt is growing is the trend of declining state support for higher education, says Dr. Charron-Chenier. That’s helped drive the out-of-pocket cost for college at a four-year public university from around $8,000 annually in 1980 to about $23,000 today.

At the same time, more jobs require a college degree than ever before. Yet fewer of those jobs come with the pay and benefits necessary for a solid foothold in the middle class.

The Biden plan is a modest one, says Dr. Charron-Chenier. But even a modest plan can help, he adds.

“It’s going to make a real difference in people’s lives,” he says.

Ms. Marques first saw the news on her phone. She was aware the White House was planning something on student loans and she’d been checking all day for an announcement.

The first person she texted was her husband. Then she talked about it with co-workers, some of whom would be, like her, eligible for the forgiveness.

Ms. Marques says she understood what she was getting into with student loans. Both her parents are teachers. She’d wanted to go to a school where she could play varsity volleyball, which meant she had to borrow.

But at this stage in her life, just starting out, lessening her student loan burden would feel like a burden lifted.

“It feels really good to have this. This is the largest financial burden or loan that we [have],” she says.

Less than a year ago, Russia’s domestic sports leagues, like their peers across Europe, flourished with a mix of foreign and domestic players.

What a difference a war makes.

Today, amid deepening Cold War-like tensions between the Kremlin and the West, and as WNBA star Brittney Griner faces a 9-year sentence in a Russian penal colony, Russian basketball, hockey, and soccer teams are finding themselves forced out of international competition. And many of the one-time “legionnaires” – foreign players – on whom they depend are dropping their contracts and leaving the country.

The alienation of Russian athletes from global sports has been an ongoing saga for years, since massive doping allegations largely forced official Russia out of the Olympics. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February led most international sports federations to ban Russian teams from scheduled competitions.

But less well known is the fate of hundreds of foreign players who, like Ms. Griner, had brought their expertise to far-flung local Russian sports teams that had been developing reputations at both the national and European levels.

The war has brought all that to a grinding halt, and upended European championship hopes for Russian basketball and soccer teams. Many European and American players have decamped while the few who remain have been subjected to considerable opprobrium.

The exodus of foreign legionnaires has been the subject of considerable debate in the Russian sports media, with some arguing that it spells the end of Russia’s sports ambitions for a generation, while others claim it will give more opportunities to Russian players and boost domestic sports development.

“Not enough qualified players”

Ms. Griner, a leading player with the Urals city of Yekaterinburg’s UMMC basketball team, was arrested on Feb. 17, before the war started, and charged with possession of a small quantity of hashish oil. In August, she was sentenced to 9 years in prison, an exceedingly harsh judgement even by Russian standards, which has caused speculation that the Kremlin hopes to use her in a Cold-War-style prisoner exchange with the United States.

But her ordeal has added to the wartime chill that’s already driving foreign players out of Russia.

“Obviously if one of the best basketball players is sitting in prison, it’s going to have a very discouraging effect on all foreign players who might think of signing a contract in Russia,” says Eduard Sorokin, an independent sports expert.

“All efforts to create a situation that attracts players of the highest level to Russian sports teams have been undermined, and all the benefits ruined. It’s not to say that legal violations should be overlooked. She pleaded guilty, [but] she might have just been fined and justice satisfied with minimal punishment. Now the damage is done.”

In an extensive interview with the official RIA-Novosti agency, UMMC captain Yevgenia Belyakova, who went to Moscow to testify on Ms. Griner’s behalf, praised her as a “good person” and a “disciplined” player who did not intend to break any laws. She lamented the fact that all the team’s foreign players and its Spanish coach left in February after Ms. Griner was arrested and the team was excluded from the EuroLeague Women’s competition.

“Naturally, the situation with Brittney could not but affect our legionnaires,” she said. “[We were] a big and friendly family. We not only played together, but also spent a lot of time off the court. It’s no secret that our team was formed for the Euroleague, and victory in [the championship] was our main goal of the season.”

Evgenia Novozhenina/AP

WNBA star and two-time Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner (background center) listens to a verdict in a courtroom in Khimki, Russia, just outside Moscow, Aug. 4, 2022.

A similar situation pervades other sports, including hockey, where Russian teams have long been seen as a spawning ground for the NHL. The Kontinental Hockey League, which includes several non-Russian clubs, saw teams in Latvia and Finland drop out in protest of the war, and many players have followed suit.

“There are not enough qualified players to fill all Russian hockey teams; we need foreign players,” says Sergei Druzhinin, manager of the Metallurg hockey team in the Urals city of Magnitogorsk. “Right now we have no foreign players in our club. They’ve all gone. It means the level of our games, both as spectacle and professional attainment, will be dragged down.” 

Some see an opportunity

Russian soccer may be taking the worst hit of all, says Nikolai Yeremenko, editor of Sovetsky Sport, a leading sports daily. “Football [soccer] has suffered more than most other sports. The money earned by leading Russian teams in [European competition] was a serious support for club budgets. But now all the high-level foreign players have left.”

“FIFA [international soccer’s governing body] made this possible by changing the rules to allow foreign players to suspend their contracts [with Russian teams] without facing any legal consequences. As a result, teams cannot plan ahead,” he says. “A player can disappear and not face any punishment. It’s already clear that the level of Russian football has deteriorated. We can no longer compare our level with the European one.”

As of early August, 37 legionnaires had left the Russian Premier League, which includes 16 clubs, and 23 new foreign players have replaced them, according to the Moscow daily Sport Express. But most of those who have left were top-rated European players, and their replacements are lesser-known players from South America and Serbia.

“A year ago, the league was replenished with players from dozens of different countries, but now there is no such wide choice. In terms of newcomers, Brazil and Serbia are in the lead – countries that have always willingly sent footballers to Russia. The difference is that before they were one of many donors, and now they are almost the only ones,” the paper said.

Some Russians, such as Soviet-era basketball legend Stanislav Yeremin, argue that the crisis should be treated as an opportunity to develop Russian sports and forge new links with countries that will still compete with Russians.

“Look forward,” Mr. Yeremin told the Sport MK newspaper. “I don’t think that we will be in Europe for at least two or three years. Therefore, we need to turn to the Russian market, or try to look for opportunities for international competitions with those countries and clubs that could still play with us. If you close yourself in, then it will be difficult.”

Russian sports have been isolated before – excluded from international competition from the Russian Revolution in 1917 until 1952.  “There was no way to compare our level, and so we were left completely outside normal development of sports” says Mr. Yeremenko. “I don’t believe in any claims that this situation can work to our advantage. Progress is only possible when the strongest compete with the strongest. Sports can’t develop under sanctions.

“It’s very hard to say what we should do now. When you have the ideology of a besieged fortress, everything gets all mixed up.”

Xander Peters

The Albritton family on Aug. 16, 2022, in front of the small trailer they've lived in since Hurricane Harvey displaced them from their home in Lumberton, Texas, five years ago. As they await repairs to their house, they've lived in this camper trailer next to it.

The bayou’s waters behind their home in Lumberton, Texas, were rising higher than any neighbors could remember, faster than they ever had. It was late August 2017, and the Albritton family – Patrick, Krystal, and their two children – had only been living there three years.

Eventually, Ms. Albritton and a family friend made the decision to leave. Hurricane Harvey’s waters were flooding over nearby U.S. Highway 96; the family was running out of time. But before they left, she doubled back to clean their home’s kitchen. She figured they’d return in a few days. School was starting soon. The kids’ closets were ready; the tags were still on their new clothes. 

They thought their home would be safe. It was located in an X flood zone, an area determined in federal guidelines to be outside the 500-year flood risk. For that reason, the Albritton family declined to acquire flood insurance. 

It would be days until they could even return to their property. Seven feet of water inundated their four-bedroom home, nearly to the eaves of its roof. It was a total loss. Mr. Albritton, who had been away at work in Baton Rouge at the time of the storm’s flooding, remembers the jolt he felt in his stomach on the day they approached what remained of their soaked belongings. 

Five years later, they still haven’t been able to rebuild. Additional large storms have threatened new floods. Yet, though struggling, the Albritton family exemplifies a common phenomenon here: Even in a region where a changing climate poses growing risks, and where people may lack important disaster insurance, residents aren’t fleeing in search of safer homesteads. Rather, through fortitude and perseverance, they are moving forward with their lives despite the added complexity that comes with unpredictable weather trends. 

“It’s hard on us as adults,” Ms. Albritton says of how the family has coped in the years since Harvey, living a small travel trailer. 

Mr. Albritton and his wife lean their shoulders into each other and grab hold of each other’s forearms. People “don’t know what our day to day consists of outside of what they see,” he says. 

Courtesy of the Albritton family

It was days after Hurricane Harvey before the Albritton family was able to enter their flooded southeast Texas home in Lumberton, seen here in September 2017 as the 7 feet of water had begun to recede. Five years later, the family remains displaced. Due to financial constraints after a contracting job gone wrong, they haven't been able to repair the home, purchased in 2014.

New era, new demands

That kitchen remains unwashed. Yet the Albrittons are still here, their children launching a new school year.

In fact, far from creating an outbound trail of “climate migrants,” Hurricane Harvey has been followed by a period of local grit coupled with continued population growth in this region. 

That’s not surprising: This land isn’t permanently sinking under water, and to most in the area it’s their longtime home – both Patrick and Krystal Albritton grew up just 30 miles away. Yet their struggles hold lessons for the nation amid warnings by scientists that climate change is deepening challenges, from drought and wildfires to heavy rainstorms. 

Affected cities like Houston are working to gird for the prospect of more storms of such magnitude. But a hard reality is that many people throughout southeast Texas and other rural regions have relatively low incomes, don’t have flood insurance, and live where local governments have limited resources to bolster their support.

“There’s a capacity inequity,” says Samuel Brody, a flood mitigation expert and the director of Texas A&M University’s Institute for a Disaster Resilient Texas. “Without the capacity to understand, to plan and to mitigate” for future flood risks, “small communities are going to continue to be left behind.” 

The gap in urban and rural community equity has widened since Harvey, Dr. Brody adds, noting how metropolitan Houston has received the bulk of assistance. But even as rural localities around metropolitan areas get as much, if not more, rainfall, “they’re not getting the same attention.” 

The Albritton family moved into a small travel trailer next to their home in the weeks after Harvey. They took out a $170,000 Small Business Administration loan to repair their home, which they now have to pay on top of their mortgage. They found a contractor. The contractor began the work. He never finished. Under Texas law, the Albrittons have little leverage. 

The kitchen in their family home was symbolic to Ms. Albritton. It was the nexus between them, their relatives, and friends, and an extension of her love language as a host. To brighten holiday events for the kids they had costumes on hand – Mickey and Minnie Mouse, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus. 

Now the family of four leans on their sense of humor in their efforts to cope. In living quarters as small as theirs, it’s difficult to not lean on each other when meandering about, they say, laughing.

The Albrittons have also occasionally attended counseling. 

“She put it in a very relatable way: ‘When you walk out the door, you get closure,’” Ms. Albritton says of their counselor. “But for us everyday, we don’t get that closure.”

How a region responds

The personal efforts of people like the Albrittons are paralleled by broader efforts to help this region cope, recover, and strengthen itself.

Flood mitigation researchers and governments – local, state, and federal – are working to understand how to future-proof regions like southeast Texas for Harvey-like natural disasters. In part due to the fact that another similar flood is likely to occur again, researchers say. 

That storm was not just massive but unusual. On the Gulf Coast, Hurricane Harvey made three landfalls over the course of six days, starting on Aug. 25, 2017. Hovering over the region, it dumped between 24 trillion and 34 trillion gallons of rainfall across the Gulf Coast. In some places as much as 50 inches.

Beyond the sheer rainfall of the nation’s second-costliest storm (with $125 billion in damages, behind only Hurricane Katrina in 2005) “what was less of an anomaly was the way we have built upon and imprinted the landscape – putting people in harm’s way over time,” Dr. Brody says. “That exacerbated the impact.”

Now Texas is working to become a beacon of flood mitigation research and “one of the most resilient states in the country,” Dr. Brody says of his and others’ recent work. 

But he also notes the lingering gap between urban and rural capacities to cope. It’s a fact Deanna Coburn and her family became acquainted with during Harvey’s flooding. 

“I grew up in Lumberton,” Ms. Coburn says. “We’ve never seen anything like” Harvey.

During the storm, the Coburn family stayed, but their mobile home floated off its blocks. Their barn full of chickens, goats, and pigs flooded. Their herd was thinned as animals either drowned during the flooding or ingested polluted water in its aftermath.

“My husband grew up on this land,” says Ms. Coburn, whose family runs a farm a few miles outside of Lumberton. “Even in 1994,” a 100-year flood event that saw up to 28 inches of water in towns like Lumberton, “it never flooded here. And we all remember how bad 1994 was.” 

Better warnings and preparation

After Harvey was followed by the deluges of Hurricane Imelda in 2019, a new effort to support the region arose. Lamar University initiated the “Southeast Texas Flood Coordination Study” linking local counties, state and federal agencies, researchers, and others in the hope of better understanding future flood threats. 

As part of their collective effort, the parties joined forces to partake in a national test with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in installing flood sensors throughout southeast Texas, from rivers and creeks to neighborhoods that often experience urban flooding.  

Also born out of this teamwork: Lamar University established a Center for Resiliency last year to do research and public education to support disaster preparation and mitigation. 

“We are a communications hub,” says Dr. Liv Haselbach, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Lamar and the director of the center. “We think we are a model for how a regional university or entities like us can become a hub that brings people together.” 

In practice, they hope their work will better allow for evacuations in areas most at risk of floods. It would also better prepare important infrastructure, like local petroleum refineries, with information that would allow them to assess risk and potentially close levee gates earlier. 

Importantly, though, their efforts are to help folks like the Albritton family. 

Sitting next to each other in their small travel trailer, Ms. Albritton points to their children. Their son is 13 years old; their daughter, 9. The Albrittons feel as though they’ve been unable to give their children the lives they promised. That guilt has weighed on them personally – on their marriage, on their mental health, on their livelihoods.  

Their family lost much in Harvey’s floodwaters. Their furniture, their children’s toys, clothes – that was one thing to lose. All of it was expendable. But the family heirlooms – the baby photos going back generations, the keepsakes from Mawmaw, more; it was all lost in the flood. 

“I feel guilty for that. That’s something I’ll carry with me forever,” Ms. Albritton says. “Because I felt like I should have taken the flooding more seriously. I just didn’t think it was going to happen.” 

“I thought material things mattered,” she adds. “But after I got home, no, it’s not what matters.”

In her debut appearance on a late-night talk show earlier this month, “Reservation Dogs” star Paulina Alexis shared that she and her co-stars are basically portraying themselves on the hit comedy show. “They wanted rez kids, they got rez kids,” she told host Jimmy Fallon. 

The reason she says people are “falling in love” with the series, which began its second season Aug. 3 on Hulu, is because it provides a window into her culture that most of America hasn’t seen. “We’re really funny people. It just hasn’t been shown before,” says Ms. Alexis, a member of the Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation.

As the entertainment industry seeks to portray a more diverse swath of American life, recent programs are evidence of how Native representation in particular is progressing. Spanning genres and time periods – from a sci-fi/horror action flick set on the 18th century Great Plains (“Prey,” also on Hulu), to a noir crime thriller series on AMC set in the 1970s Southwest (“Dark Winds,” based on the books by Tony Hillerman), to a teen comedy drama that takes place in contemporary rural Oklahoma (“Reservation Dogs”) – the content is setting new standards for authenticity and representation of Native people.

This progress hasn’t happened overnight, Native artists say, and more is still needed. But beyond moving past old stereotypes, the shift is bringing a new sense of empowerment to Native audiences. 

For decades “the only space [Native] people had was to be extras in movies, or to be [consultants] correcting mistakes on technical issues,” says Paul Chaat Smith, a Comanche author and essayist, and curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

“What’s new is … you have Native people in [leading] positions,” he adds. “That’s a shift people have been waiting for for a long time.”

A film in Comanche

Jhane Myers has been working in the film industry for nearly two decades. But walking through the set of “Prey” in Canada last year – past the teepees and campfires of an authentic early 1700s Comanche hunting camp – she felt something she’d never felt before. 

Chris Pizzello/AP

Jhane Myers, a producer for the film "Prey" on Hulu, is an industry veteran. The cast of the recent film, an installment in the sci-fi/horror franchise "Predator," is made up almost entirely of First Nation or Native American actors and has been dubbed in Comanche.

“My ancestors probably had a camp exactly like that,” says Ms. Myers, a producer on the film who is from the Comanche and Blackfeet Nations.

“It [was] a beautiful step back, really beautiful,” she adds. “Rarely do you get to do that in film.”

The film is rare in several ways. It’s a period film inside a sci-fi/horror film. It’s part of the long-running “Predator” franchise, but set centuries before the original. The cast is made up almost entirely of First Nation or Native American actors – including Amber Midthunder, an enrolled member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes, as the hero, Naru. It’s also the first film to be dubbed in Comanche.

In the dubbed version, the Comanche title for the film is “Kühtaamia,” which translates to a big hunt or trial. It references a real rite of passage for Comanche warriors of the time, relating to hunting something that is hunting you, and it’s a central feature of the film’s plot. Naru yearns, early in the film, to go out for her kühtaamia – and it becomes a more dangerous hunt than she could have possibly imagined. 

On Aug. 9 Disney announced that the film, released Aug. 5, had set a new streaming record on Hulu. For Ms. Myers, the producer, the ultimate highlight was when she screened “Prey” in the Comanche Nation. As the film concluded, the audience erupted in Comanche war cries – the same cries heard in the film’s closing scene. “That’s better than a pat on the back,” she says.

“Often we’re seen as the villains, or we’re seen as downtrodden, [or] we’re seen as the sidekick,” she adds. “To see us in this type of position, but to know that my people see it and are empowered from it, that’s amazing.”

David Bukach/Courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Hulu

Amber Midthunder stars as Naru in "Prey," which debuted on Aug. 5.

Feeling empowered

Empowerment is a recurring theme for the Native people involved in these shows and films.

In a behind-the-scenes video about Season 1 of “Reservation Dogs,” Tazbah Chavez – a producer, writer, and director on the comedy – describes how the only programming she could identify with growing up featured Black characters.

“If I was a kid and I saw [“Reservation Dogs”], that would have exponentially made me more confident in who I am, made me more proud of who I am, and just I think feel more understood in the greater fabric that’s America,” Ms. Chavez, a citizen of the Bishop Paiute Tribe, adds. 

The new shows are offering more work for those who are both in front of and behind the camera. “This industry was built on people giving each other opportunities. ... Now we have Native showrunners, and we get to give Native people opportunities,” says Sterlin Harjo, a “Reservation Dogs” director and writer, in the video. Mr. Harjo, a Seminole and Muscogee (Creek) filmmaker, and Taika Waititi, a New Zealand filmmaker of Maori descent, are co-creators of the show, which won a Peabody Award in June.

Michael Moriatis/Stalwart Productions/AMC

Veteran Lakota actor Zahn McClarnon stars as Navajo police officer Joe Leaphorn in “Dark Winds,” a series based on the books by Tony Hillerman that debuted on AMC in June. Mr. McClarnon also plays a tribal police officer in “Reservation Dogs.”

Some of the same cast members are featured across the new programming. Veteran Lakota actor Zahn McClarnon plays a tribal police officer in “Reservation Dogs,” and is also Navajo police officer Joe Leaphorn in “Dark Winds,” which debuted in June. Devery Jacobs, a member of the Kanien’kehá:ka Mohawk Nation, is one of the titular “Reservation Dogs” and she also plays a minor role in the Peacock comedy “Rutherford Falls,” another recent outlet for Native writers and actors. 

Even with all the opportunities, there is still room for progress. The Hollywood Diversity Report – conducted every year by the University of California, Los Angeles – found that in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, fewer than 1% of acting roles in the most-watched films were filled by Native Americans. Fewer than 1% of the writers and directors in those films were Native.

“While overall diversity and representation has increased [in entertainment], Native diversity and representation has not,” says Leah Salgado, a citizen of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and chief impact officer at IllumiNative, a nonprofit focused on amplifying contemporary Native voices and stories.

Like Ms. Myers, the producer, Ms. Salgado adds that she would like to see more Native actors in content that isn’t Native-focused. They want to see a dentist who just happens to be Native, or a best friend in a romantic comedy who just happens to be Native.

That said, the recent Native-focused content has been heartening for Ms. Salgado. She notes, for instance, that Naru’s role in “Prey” highlights the importance of female warriors “and the example they set for our young ones.”

She also appreciates how the new shows allow her to see “my family and my community reflected on the screen.” 

“We can be badass action heroes, we can be funny museum curators, we can be teased by our uncles,” she continues. “We can have that now in a way we haven’t had at all, ever, in the history of film and television.” 

“Prey” is rated R, and both of the series “Dark Winds” and “Reservation Dogs” are rated TV-MA, for mature audiences. 

In 2015, while sharing a two-person kayak in Monterey Bay just off the coast of California, biologist and filmmaker Tom Mustill and his friend Charlotte Kinloch suddenly faced a dire situation. 

A 30-ton humpback whale breached the water’s surface next to them and came down on the edge of their kayak, dislodging them from their watercraft in one swift, dizzying, and extraordinary moment. 

At first, the pair had a hard time getting others to believe their tale, until a video from a nearby boat showed up online. They became a viral news sensation overnight. 

The encounter with the whale energized rather than terrified Mustill, and he became determined to better understand these animals. The result of his global search for knowledge is coherently put together in his book “How To Speak Whale: A Voyage Into the Future of Animal Communication.” 

It’s a travelogue, a history lesson, a critique of the scientific community when it comes to animal studies, and a high-tech conservation game plan all wrapped into one book. Most of all it’s a captivating, thought-provoking read, leaving its audience with a greater sense of the complexity and inherent value of these sovereigns of the deep.

"How To Speak Whale: A Voyage Into the Future of Animal Communication," by Tom Mustill, Grand Central Publishing, 272 pp.

As Mustill discovered, even if he can’t presently ask a whale why it does what it does, there are still rewards to reap when we make the effort to learn just a smidgen more about the world around us. For instance, the author shares a brief history of legendary conservationist Roger Payne and his exploration of whale sounds in the 1960s and ’70s. At the time, the whaling industry was killing millions of these sea giants, reducing the numbers of blue whales “until just 0.1 percent of its population remained.” 

Payne took his recordings of whale sounds and turned them into an album in 1970: “Songs of the Humpback Whale.” He then convinced National Geographic to include copies of the audio disc in its January 1979 issue of the magazine. As millions of people became entranced by the strange, powerful sounds, it inspired protests around the world, putting pressure on the whaling industry. Now, thanks to the advocacy of an empathetic public, species like the blue whale are beginning to repopulate. 

It’s heartening to see how learning about whale sounds – including chirps, clicks, and calls – has encouraged greater compassion for these creatures. The author puts it this way: “The more we learn about other animals and discover evidence of their manifold capacities, the more we care, and this alters how we treat them.”

At the heart of Mustill’s book beats a high regard for nonhuman species. Despite an underlying bias in the scientific community that reinforces the place of humans as superior, decades of research show that animals have more in common with humankind than we realize. For example, some cetaceans make friendships and grieve when one of their own dies. They play, enjoy looking at themselves in the mirror, and have different cultures of behavior depending upon where they grew up. 

The research is ongoing. Thanks to the combined talents of several computer engineers from Silicon Valley, people who have worked for Twitter and Firefox, animal research is growing at a faster pace and at a larger, more detailed scale than ever before. 

Researchers have new tools at their disposal, including drones both in the water and on the surface, as well as small recorders on and around the whales. Using the latest software innovations, scientists are finally able to not only harvest colossal amounts of data, but also sift and sort through it in significantly less time. With their research, the Cetacean Translation Initiative is striving to build a kind of Google Translate for animals.

It’s Mustill’s hope that these ongoing studies on the ocean, like his book, will help make plain that cetaceans are intelligent, multifaceted creatures, worthy of our utmost care.

AP

A person passes in front of the High Court in Kuala Lumpur, Aug. 25,

This may be a record in a national surge for activism in honesty. Between 2017 and 2020, the percentage of Malaysians who told pollsters that ordinary people can make a difference against corruption rose 13 points, to 68%. The number is probably even higher now after a political earthquake hit the Southeast Asian nation this week.

On Tuesday, people in Malaysia watched in awe as the highest court sent a powerful former prime minister, Najib Razak, to prison to serve a 12-year sentence for a massive corruption scandal involving a state fund called 1MDB. The scandal is known as the world’s largest kleptocracy case, involving billions of dollars.

While much of the credit for Mr. Najib’s imprisonment went to five justices for their integrity in withstanding political pressure, many others – from whistleblowers to lawyers to members of the public – were praised.

“This proves that the people are in power,” said a prominent opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim. He cited a shift in the public mood during a 2018 parliamentary election that ousted Mr. Najib and his party from power.

That election, in the predominantly Muslim country of some 33 million people, also helped elevate a powerful voice for an independent judiciary. Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat became chief justice in 2019, the first woman to hold the post. She remains outspoken about the role of the courts in treating everyone with equal justice under the law.

“It is common to hear judges being labeled as a conservative or a liberal judge. As far as I am concerned, only one label matters, namely, an impartial judge,” she said in 2021.

She also said the ability of a judge to resist corruption must be matched by a respect for core values of independence, personal integrity, propriety, equality, competence, and diligence.

Those qualities, in both Malaysia’s courts and the public at large, have now helped bring a major financial scandal to light, sending a big politician to prison. “This makes a significant change in political norms in the Southeast Asia region where leaders often enjoy unofficial ‘immunity’ from their successors,” wrote commentator James Chin in Channel News Asia.

That shift in norms began with what one civic activist called “the collective spirit of Malaysians” in understanding that ordinary people can demand honest governance.