During a recent day on set of “The Lowdown,” background casting director Loren Waters sat near the video village, not far from showrunner Sterlin Harjo’s acoustic guitar. Lead actor and producer Ethan Hawke suddenly appeared, picked it up and started strumming and singing.
Waters was in an audience of one while the Academy Award nominee played a couple of original songs before putting down the guitar and going about his acting duties. She sat in awe of what had just occurred.
That was just one surreal moment in the past year and a half for the Cherokee/Kiowa filmmaker, who in 2019 thought her career path would take her into a law office. Today, she’s a breakout star in the film industry.
On June 30, Waters received a 2026 Pacific Southwest Emmy Award for her documentary short “Tiger,” focused on acclaimed Muscogee painter Dana Tiger. The documentary debuted last January at Sundance Film Festival, where Waters won the Short Film Special Jury Award for Directing. That kicked off a wild ride for “Tiger,” which went on to be shortlisted for an Academy Award nomination.
A week before the Emmy win, Waters learned she will get to vote for next year’s Oscars as a new member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
“I was shocked,” said Waters from inside her Tulsa Artist Fellowship studio, where she has a residency through 2028. “It was a very surreal day. The fact that I’m this early in my career and this young and now in the Academy and able to vote for films, like, that’s freaking crazy! But it’s cool because now I can be the one to advocate for more Indigenous people in the Academy, and hopefully more films will win that have Indigenous representation.”
After graduating in 2019 from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in environmental studies, Waters returned to her hometown and landed an internship at Cherokee Nation’s “Osiyo: Voices of the Cherokee People” before working for Cherokee Nation Film.
Harjo had just shot the pilot for “Reservation Dogs” when Waters met him at a dinner with mutual friends.
“No one knew anything about the show, but it was just a gut feeling. I was like, ‘I need to work on the show,’” Waters said. “I told him I wanted to take the next step, and he was like, ‘Well, I can get you an interview,’ and I was like, ‘I will quit my job tomorrow.’
“So, basically in like 48 hours I was working in the production office on ‘Reservation Dogs,’ and I feel like from there, it just gave me a little bit more confidence,” Waters said.
In 2021 she directed the documentary short “Restoring Néške’emāne,” which was selected for screening at Oklahoma City’s deadCenter Film Festival.
While on a break from Rez Dogs, Waters worked in 2023 as a production assistant on Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” and in casting for Erica Tremblay’s “Fancy Dance.”
While taking on work for others, Waters returned to the director’s chair for the 2024 short documentary ᏗᏂᏠᎯ ᎤᏪᏯ (“Meet Me At The Creek”), which profiles a tribal elder and the Superfund site Tar Creek.
It won first place at the UBUNTU Climate Arts & Storytelling Showcase and was a Top 10 finalist at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. That year she got invited to handle extras casting for “Reservation Dogs” through her newly formed Waters Media. It’s a job she’s continued for Harjo through the first two seasons of “The Lowdown.”
With the success of “Tiger” came more awards, like the 2025 Princess Grace Film Honoraria Award from the New Orleans Film Society and honors like Forbes naming her in 2025 to its 30 under 30 list and being listed among Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” At this year’s deadCenter festival, Waters returned to receive a Film Icon Award.
She recently directed her first narrative short film “A Map to the Next World,” a 1980s coming of age love story inspired by a Joy Harjo poem and the murder of Tiger’s brother. Soon she will begin submitting it to festivals.
Next up is a documentary about Joy Harjo’s life. With Sterlin Harjo’s support as an executive producer, Waters will direct the film about the Muscogee Nation poet, musician and United States Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2022.
Waters first met the poet, then a Tulsa Artist Fellow, inside the downtown building she’s currently working from. It was during a First Friday Art Crawl shortly after Waters had moved to town.
“I was a total fan girl, and I don’t feel like I get that way very often with people,” Waters said. “She’s a Native woman who has an incredible story, and even then I didn’t know all of that. I just knew she was an artist and had beautiful poetry. Now we’re friends, and I’ve been able to spend time with her and learn more about her story that she wants a Native woman to tell.”
Waters is hosting a series of community film screenings at Philbrook Art & Gardens as part of her commitments to Tulsa Artist Fellowship. The first installment was “Lainey Wilson: Keepin’ Country Cool” featuring a Q&A with Oklahoma filmmaker Amy Scott. This fall, she’s hoping to screen “If I Go Will They Miss Me,” a Sundance selection by Los Angeles filmmaker Walter Thompson-Hernandez.
Waters also directed a music video in the Philbrook gardens for Cherokee musician Kalyn Fay’s single “Windsong” released in February. Her foray into music videos will continue with plans to direct for Cherokee musician Ken Pomeroy, as well as local singer-songwriters Joleen Brown and Ari Yvon.
The 29-year-old has been on a tear in recent years, and she admits it can be overwhelming trying to keep up with all the projects, awards shows and roles ranging from filmmaker to casting director to executive director of her NBA player brother’s nonprofit, the Lindy Waters III Foundation. That said, she doesn’t see herself slowing down anytime soon.
“It’s a crazy trajectory. I don’t know how it happened, but I do think that I am pretty determined,” Waters said. “I just want to tell stories and want to try and do it in the most beautiful and authentic way that uplifts the person or the story that it’s about in a way that makes me feel good and ignites something in me, because if it’s igniting something in me, then hopefully someone else can relate to it.
“I want to keep pushing the form and thinking about how we can be creative and tell these stories that don’t put indigenous people in a stereotypical frame.”
Disclosure: The Tulsa Artist Fellowship is a program of the George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF). GKFF also provided financial support for the Tulsa Flyer. News decisions at the Flyer are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
