Marvel Studios’ first animated series What If..? on Disney+ explores alternate timelines for famous moments from Marvel Cinematic Universe movies — like what if Thor was an only child? Season two, which is premiering now, introduces an original Native American Marvel heroine: Kahhori is a Mohawk woman who goes on a quest to discover her power. The episode takes place almost entirely in the Mohawk language.
Doug George-Kanentiio, an Akwesasne Mohawk, is a cultural advisor for the Kahhori episode. He said he remembers reading comics as a kid, but he couldn’t relate to them.
"There wasn't anything in the media at all that showed us in a positive way, nothing," George-Kanentiio said.
George-Kanentiio said the few Native characters, if any, were too often on the edge of the story and portrayed using offensive stereotypes.
"Those figures were angry and aggressive, and you know, had war paint on, and were always in the state of conflict and warfare," George-Kanentiio said. "And that kind of turns you off as a kid."
That’s changing.
Meet Kahhori — a new original Marvel character.
She’s a young Mohawk woman living in the sovereign Haudenosaunee Confederacy prior to the colonization of America. The area today is part of Northern New York state in the Adirondack Mountains.
The characters speak in the Mohawk language throughout, with subtitles.
During her adventure, Kahhori learns about a magical portal in the Forbidden Lake — forbidden because many people went missing in it. She learns its spirit, represented through a blue light, seeps through the water, land, and plants, and when the people eat those spirits they take in some of their power too.
"Their language is gonna be heard in places the world has never been spoken before," What If...? Writer Ryan Little said.
Little crafted this episode over four years. He said the goal was to offer the most accurate depiction of every Mohawk costume, basket, and tattoo. Animation allowed Marvel to be precise. Using the Mohawk language, he said, helped fill out the story with full period accuracy.
"To totally showcase them as a people, it felt like we wanted to take the full ride and not hold anything back," Little said.
Little said for the latest season of What If…? Marvel uses Kahhori to build on traditional Mohawk teachings and beliefs — using animation to go back into the past in ways few comics and movies have before.
"She ventures toward this sort of local legend of theirs, called the Forbidden Lake," Little said. "That all they know about is, it glows with power, and anybody who enters it disappears. And so she sort of explores it in a moment of duress and ends up having a gigantic adventure and cool Marvel things ensue."
While Little wrote Kahhori’s first adventure, he hopes a Mohawk writer will get to write the next.
He worked with the Mohawk people throughout the process including historian-advisor George-Kanentiio. He helped the Marvel team accurately depict what village life looked like, the environment of their traditional territory within the Adirondack Mountains, and the appearance of the Native peoples.
"This is a new, entirely new, innovative way of looking at Indigenous people, and it destroys all those stereotypes of the past," George-Kanentiio said. "It just, you know, just obliterates them when they see this."
It’s a start, at least. And George-Kanentiio said depicting Indigenous peoples in a positive manner, as Marvel is doing, could help change the way Native kids see themselves.
