Netflix reimagines Little House with Black and Native characters

Netflix is sending Little House on the Prairie back onto the frontier on July 9 with a revision that expands Laura Ingalls Wilder’s world beyond the Ingalls family and into Osage country. The eight-episode first season has already been renewed for a second run, and the creators know that reworking one of American television’s most familiar pioneer stories will draw criticism.

The new series, produced by CBS Studios and Anonymous Content, is based on Wilder’s third Little House book, Little House on the Prairie. It follows the Ingalls family as they leave Wisconsin and head toward Independence, Kansas, hoping for a fresh start on the prairie. Netflix describes the show as a family drama, a survival tale and an origin story of the American West, but it also pushes into territory the earlier versions avoided: the consequences of westward expansion for Indigenous communities.

That shift runs through the cast and the structure of the season. Alice Halsey plays Laura Ingalls, Luke Bracey plays Charles Ingalls, Crosby Fitzgerald plays Caroline Ingalls and Skywalker Hughes plays Mary Ingalls. Meegwun Fairbrother, Alyssa Wapanatâhk and Wren Zhawenim Gotts portray members of an Osage family that functions as a parallel story to the Ingalls, with Osage cultural consultant Julie O’Keefe advising the production. Rebecca Sonnenshine is the showrunner and executive producer, joined by Joy Gorman Wettels, Dana Fox, Susanna Fogel and Trip Friendly.

The creators have framed that choice as a correction to the older canon, which often flattened Native people into the background of a white family’s coming-of-age story. CBC conversations with Indigenous actors involved in the project pointed to a production process that aimed for depth rather than erasure, while Amy Fatzinger, a scholar at the University of Arizona, has said Wilder’s original work is complex but still contains controversial depictions that need to be watched with a critical eye.

The timing gives the reboot extra charge. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s first book, Little House in the Big Woods, came out in 1932, and NBC’s adaptation premiered as a pilot on March 30, 1974 before running from 1974 to 1983 under Michael Landon. Wilder’s name was removed from a children’s literature award in 2018 over concerns about her legacy, a reminder that the books have long sat at the center of arguments over who gets to be remembered in national myths. Arriving during the United States’ 250th anniversary year, Netflix’s new version is trying to widen that memory while inviting the backlash that usually follows.