(Jewish Group) For Jewish Indigenous actress Sarah Podemski, it's a miracle just to exist
In FX’s newest hit series, “Reservation Dogs,” the audience first meets Rita Smallhill, mother to main character Bear, prepping for a night out. Rita croons TLC’s “Waterfalls” while blithely swiping mascara across her eyelashes and checking herself out in the mirror. When Bear asks where she’s going and who she’ll be with, Rita retorts, “With my friends, Grandpa.”
It’s a telling first introduction to Rita, a tough yet loving single Native mom in a show which is historic for sharing Native stories and characters with such a widespread audience.
Sarah Podemski, the actress who plays Rita, is similarly tough. Frankly, she’s had to be. On her mother’s side she is Salteaux, a tribe of First Nations people who are part of the Ojibwe Nations in Canada. After inhabiting North America for thousands of years, Indigenous peoples, including her ancestors, were dispossessed of their land and culture by European colonizers. Other horrors they would endure include the residential school system in Canada and the United States, which, again, Sarah’s relatives were subjected to.
On her father’s side, she comes from Holocaust survivors. Her grandfather, Joseph Podemski, was born in Lodz, Poland in the 1920s and, like basically all other European Jews during World War II, was sent to concentration camps. During this time he lost his mother and sister. After being liberated, Joseph reunited with his brother Fajwel, who was hidden during the war, and together they moved to Israel. There, Joseph met his wife, Betty, and they started a family together. Eventually, they moved to Toronto, where Joseph passed away just last year.
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