Emmy-nominated producer Joey Clift wants you to see his short film, Pow!

Pow! is a short film about a Native American kid scrambling to charge his dying video game console at a bustling intertribal powwow.

There are many reasons to keep your eye on Native trailblazer Joey Clift, a Cowlitz comedian, writer and producer who most recently received a Children’s and Family Emmy nomination for his work on the children’s animated program Spirit Rangers. The show, which was executive produced by Karissa Valencia, is now available to watch on Netflix.

I recommend it highly. As a Rotten Tomatoes critic, I proudly gave it a perfect score.

See related story: #NativeNerd review: Spirit Rangers is a magical, beautiful nod to Native culture.

But in 2025, Clift has already gotten an early start on the year with a new animated short titled Pow!

Pow!

Pow! is an animated short about a young Native kid trying to find a place to charge his video game console at a bustling intertribal powwow. According to Clift, “Pow! has a largely Indigenous team working on it, and I’m really proud of the names we have involved.”

POW! short film poster. (Courtesy image)

Those involved include Vera Starbard, a writer from Molly of Denali who was a consulting producer on Pow!, the award-winning Cherokee artist Morgan Thompson who did character designs and backgrounds, Spirit Rangers composer Jordan Kamalu and sound designer Jeff Carpenter, and a team of powwow and Coastal Salish consultants to ensure authenticity.

“We’ve also got some great non-Native folks involved, like former The Simpsons producer Donick Cary as an executive producer.”

Questions and answers of an Emmy nominee

In an interview with Native Viewpoint, Clift discussed how his short film featured a unique blend of animation styles including pixel-based art reminiscent of old school Super Nintendo games and Native American ledger art.

Vincent Schilling: You told me in an email about this really cool film called Pow! Of course, I first thought of your previous short film, “Telling People You’re Native American When You’re Not Native Is A Lot Like Telling A Bear You’re A Bear When You’re Not A Bear.”

Joey Clift: Yeah, the title is 24 words long. Whenever I talk about that, I’m always like, ‘Wait, what did I call this thing?’ My previous short film names were so long that I was like, ‘Can I make something that’s just three letters?’

Schilling: So now you have Pow.

Clift: It’s based on my personal experiences. Growing up on the Tulalip reservation, I viewed myself as a gamer before I viewed myself as being Native. My mom would smudge the corners of my room while I was playing Grand Theft Auto 3. Eventually I learned that you can be a gamer, and you can also love your culture.

I remember my mom dragging me to powwows when I was growing up and sitting on the bleachers and playing Game Boy and that’s a lot of what this short film kind of explores. The idea is that you’re at this really cool cultural event, but you are more interested in your game. You don’t necessarily feel like you are welcome to do that. And yet, it’s learning that those two things can coexist at the same time.

A still from the short film Pow! (Courtesy image)

Schilling: There is great animation in Pow with several different styles.

Clift: I worked with this really great animation artist, Morgan Thompson. She’s a member of the Cherokee tribe, and she won an Annie Award. She’s young, but extremely talented. Because I grew up loving games like old Super Nintendo RPGs, the base visual style for Pow is anime that meets watercolor backgrounds. It’s sort of playing with perspectives of pixelated space with Jake our main character and that’s how he sees the world and the powwow, and the vibrant colors is how his parents see powwow culture.

A pixelated themed moment from Pow! (Courtesy image)

Schilling: You mentioned a lot of great folks on this team.

Clift: We really put together a dream team for this project. It’s a largely Native team, with great non-Native allies on the production. So on the Native side of things, we had Vera Starboard from Molly of Denali, Jeff Carpenter, who’s Chickasaw Nation, to do the sound design. Jordan Kamalu–who’s Indigenous Hawaiian–did the soundtrack, which is a mix of Nintendo video game music mixed with a kind of Redbone style funk. We also have an all-Native voice cast.

We had a lot of other folks working in the production who I’m really excited about, and one of our executive producers was Donick Cary, who was a former executive producer on The Simpsons. We brought in the animation production company FlickerLab, who’s worked with everybody from Michael Moore to Stephen Colbert.

Schilling: How can a young animator get to where Joey Clift is today?

Clift: Thank you for asking that. I started very small with the concept of, ‘What can I do as myself on a stage with a microphone?’ Then I just followed the joy and consistently asked myself, ‘What are the things that I enjoy doing?’

A still from Pow! Created by Joey Clift. (Courtesy image)

This has probably been a 15-year process for me making Pow. That’s a long road to being able to do something with this level of resources and this kind of team attached.

For any Native folks who are interested in doing this–it’s okay to start small. Start with what you know. You might not be able to make an eight minute animated short with a big team right now, but the funny jokes, the funny short stories, the horror projects, or the comics that you write and draw yourself now, might lead to things like this, where you have teams that you’re really proud of, and have cool credits behind you. So it’s okay to start small and start with what you can do. And then eventually things will build.

Schilling: How can people watch Pow?

Clift: [At film festivals for now.] We’re getting ready to start our film festival run, and those dates will start to be announced in early March. Our world premiere is Māori land in New Zealand, the biggest Indigenous Film Festival in the southern hemisphere. My goal with this project is to really try to punch for the weight class of things like Pixar shorts. Pow! Is something I’ve wanted to make for several years and I’ve spent the past year or so working on it. It’s a labor of love with a big Native heart, and I can’t wait for the world to see it!

JOEY CLIFT SOCIALS

https://twitter.com/joeytainment

https://www.instagram.com/joeycliiiiiift

https://www.threads.net/@joeycliiiiiift

https://bsky.app/profile/joeytainment.bsky.social


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