Clan

SEASON ONE OVERVIEW:

San Francisco and the Cherokee Nation, 1969

Flower children, runaways, and drug dealers jostle with businessmen and society matrons on the streets of once-conservative San Francisco, now dead center for the youth rebellion. Race and gender equality take centerstage as wives battle husbands, children abandon their parents, and protesters defy the government. 

On the quiet western edge of the city where the foghorn plays an almost nightly lullaby, June Wilder is a secretly frustrated, outwardly model Catholic housewife tending to Tom, her conservative, ex-Navy commander husband, and two teenage daughters with the dedication of a ruby-lipped saint. But when June has a nighttime visitation from a young, 19th-century Indigenous spirit woman, she is spurred to visit Martin, her long-estranged, recently widowed father. There, she learns, to her great pride, that his mother was a Cherokee full blood. June finally understands the source of her lifelong identity crisis.

Determined to learn more about her heritage, June goes to an Indians of All Tribes powwow where she meets Nathan Blackthorn, a charismatic Ohlone history professor, and Vera and Pearl Fivekiller, mother/daughter activists newly relocated from Indian Territory, Oklahoma. With her new friends, June launches into a passionate journey of knowledge and identity, throwing herself into the nascent Red Power movement, standing with pride against those who scorn her as she abandons her middle-class comforts for a bunk on Alcatraz, with Nathan and the Fivekillers, and a cell in the County jail, with her daughters.

But when Martin disappears, Nathan leaves SF for Pine Ridge, and her family seems to have moved on without her, June's past trauma of desertion devastates her newfound purpose; she collapses into an alcohol-fueled nervous breakdown. After a policeman picks up wandering June, Tom, distraught, commits her to the County Mental Hospital.

There June meets another patient, a seemingly cheerful, motherly, Black protester. With the loving encouragement of June's new friend, her family, and the Fivekillers, June regains her strength and sanity and is allowed to go home – with bipolar medication.

But Tom, after finding romantic letters from Nathan, has hidden her beloved Native books and regalia, sending June into a bitter downward spiral. When June, once again fighting isolation and loneliness, learns that her Black friend committed suicide, she stops taking her meds and tries to commit suicide herself.

At the last minute, June is saved by Tom. Scared out of his wits, deeply repentant and humbled, he finds a family therapist, and at last, the family begins to heal, recovering a new chapter of love and respect for one another.

Recovered, and determined to find her father, June leaves a note for her family, buys a used muscle car, and makes her first solo road trip on Route 66 to the Cherokee Nation.

There where she meets her Aunt Mag, now a wounded healer/hermit in the Oklahoma hills. Together, they find and comfort Martin, who has gone home to die.

Back in SF, Tom is on his own journey of identity, aided by his Navy buddy turned Buddhist, and a progressive priest, both war veterans. Further enlightened after several trips on mushrooms, Tom realizes his unshakable love for June and proposes to her again at the same romantic San Francisco hotel where they met during WWII. When Nathan shows up, rather than a macho showdown, Tom quietly asks June to choose between them – he will accept her answer.

But June chooses ... herself.

With her Aunt Mag's help, June finally understands her grandmother's message, and her own exciting new place in the world. Like another, earlier American hero, June “strikes out for the Territories" to begin a new life of her own -- as her aunt's apprentice.

Awards for CLAN aka JUNE ROSE:

The Black List Indigenous List 2022

IllumiNative Pop Culture Finalist Producers Track 2022

Finalist Coverfly Pitch Week Spring 2022

Quarterfinalist, The Script Lab TV Pilot 2021

Quarterfinalist, Final Draft Big Break 2020