10 Times Star Trek Should Have Known Better

Truly, this connects almost everything about the conception and execution of Chakotay’s character arc on Star Trek: Voyager, with Tattoo being the symbol of the mistakes made here. In summary, the producers for Star Trek: Voyager hired a known fraud - Jamake Highwater - as their consultant for Chakotay’s Native American heritage. They were promised an accurate guide for how to portray him and instead they were given a laundry list of stereotypes, half-facts, and nonsense. 

Due diligence may have been slightly more difficult in the pre-Google days, but there is no excuse for not checking your sources when it comes to representation. Highwater had been outed as a fraud years before Voyager went into production, with that information on public record. When Chakotay was included in Voyager, he quickly slipped into Native stereotypes that were already deemed harmful by 1995. Notice how quickly his heritage stops playing a part in his storyline, as they attempted to phase out its importance. 

Tattoo meant well, with a story about Chakotay coming to terms with his differences with his father. The tree spirits that his tribe were inspired to follow are revealed to be aliens from the Delta Quadrant, periodically moving from planet to planet, inspiring the locals. When evidence of them is discovered on Voyager’s journey home, the audience is treated to an episode exposing the spirits from Native American culture being portrayed as aliens, while Robert Beltran was given a censored, then digitally painted, scene, all while he remembers his Dad. The episode was one of a number of second season stories that didn’t really work and, though it was not the final time that Chakotay’s Native heritage was mentioned, it was probably the most overt. 

The idea to include a Native character in Star Trek was an excellent choice. The execution was not.