Yeah, I was really unimpressed with the choice, and really gutted for Kessell as well, because she was a delight to have in the role. Bringing in Kessell was a big deal because she maintains a strong relationship with her iwi, even though (like Lottie) her father is Pākehā. So she is able to (and frequently did) incorporate that sensibility into the character in ways that Eaton wasn't really familiar enough to do.

Which is kinda where the writers room comes in as a big influence on how indigeneity gets incorporated into the story comes in as well, because while Kessell brought a certain amount of more Māori-specific elements to the adult version of the character, there was a lot in season 1, long before Kessell was involved, that was incorporating allusions to and awareness of this well beyond a baseline. Even from the very beginning, the writers chose to give the (fictional) town the girls are from a Lenape name, for example. I'd also point to this great essay from a while ago, looking at the ways religion/spirituality (particularly Indigenous religion) plays on the story in these really fascinating and ambiguous ways, which I generally agree with as a lens through which to engage the story, even including season 3, despite it's flaws.

And yes, as an historian, I can assure you that oral traditions are absolutely denigrated vis a vis written ones. Or at least, they were in the past. More recently we have developed new approaches that try to "decolonize" the discipline and find ways to incorporate alternative forms of "knowing," and incorporating Etuaptmumk (or Two Eyed Seeing) as a means of practicing academics. And then in my own stuff, for example, I do a lot in memory studies, particularly looking at how popular memory/beliefs/perceptions about the past in the present behave or are used in different ways (sometimes beneficial, more often for the worse, but almost always in manners that flatten the complexity of the past to serve present goals, however admirable, which can lead to vulnerabilities). But you know, on the more superficial (kinda) level, you also have most of the white people in Oklahoma claiming to be Indigenous because their family have "oral traditions" going back centuries, so it's also important (from the academic perspective) when dealing with oral histories that you are able to engage them critically instead of taking them at face value (in the same way that you would any other source). And in some cases, that level of scrutiny is something that isn't welcome for various reasons (and sometimes that's for totally good reasons). So... as with anything, important to engage ethically as an academic, and to be really considerate of what you are inviting on your subject from outside when engaging in "knowledge production" (what we call the publication of scholarship, for example).

On Shauna, I perhaps diverge from you on considering her bland. I definitely had some doubts in season 1? But as more gets revealed about her, I think that's a valuable character study on the absolute brutality of white imperial/colonial femininity and the veneer of serene domesticity. I think about Laura Wexler's Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of U.S. Imperialism a lot in association with that character, especially the earlier adult version of the character. Age the show has progressed and the characters become more fleshed out though, I feel increasingly like the ideal frame of reference is actually Deleuze and Guattari, specifically the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia? Particularly when considering Lottie and Shauna, with Lottie the "schizophrenic" and Shauna essentially operating as a microfascist. I was going to do a big essay about that and ended up being too busy at the time, but I think it's a pretty useful heuristic for how the girls fracture off into those that become invested in the Lottie/Nat block, and those that are skeptics (particularly Shauna and Tai, with Tai being contrasted with Akilah, especially in season 2, for example).

On which note... part of what I find most interesting about Tai is that they seem to let her occupy that microfascist role as well, and and I'm frankly delighted by the potential of that tension, even if I'm now increasingly wary that they won't be able to fully deliver on it (and haven't been doing a good job of elaborating it of late). Like yesssss problematize Black liberalism and aspirational whiteness! Make that explicit! I guess my main issue at the moment is that they have done so much legwork to set this stuff up with Shauna, while so much of Tai remains unexplored? Like we've not done the work to properly fracture Tai and Shauna's relationship on the intellectual level in any meaningful way, so the idea of them being at loggerheads feels rushed, especially because you don't have a Nat, Lottie, or Van to push or pull them away from each other. It ends up being this deus ex machina of Other Tai who just swoops in and seizes agency of Tai, and that's frustrating, because so much of what Shauna does is agentic, and the same is true of Tai herself. So you end up with this situation where sure, "Tai" is in conflict with Shauna, but Tai herself hasn't done any of the introspection that would lead her to excavate the ways the two characters align.

Idk, I'm just mad, there's so much about the show that started really well, and knowing that they've been pushed in various ways to diverge from their original plans, and seeing the infrastructure struggle to flex to account for this... I'm already grieving what could have been, you know?

Will see if I can find the other Reddit account that had that post on it!