The reimagined #RacialDraft backstory for Native American Barry Allen is as follows:
When Barry Allen (Iroquois) was a boy, his parents’ relationship wasn’t going well on the preserve on the outskirts of Central City, and while he prepared to participate in a spelling bee at school, his mother Nora was struggling to encourage him despite working double shifts and trying to get a divorce from his father Henry. Nora and Henry began to argue after picking Barry up from school and sent him to the bookstore in the meantime. When Barry returned, his mother had been murdered and his father had been arrested as the prime suspect, with law enforcement going as far to call him “Iroquois trash,” blatantly showing they had no fair judgment or belief that an Indigenous person could be innocent until proven guilty.
Fortunately, Darryl Frye, who had secretly been involved romantically with Nora, pulled some strings and was able to take Barry in. For years, Barry visited his father in prison, promising to look over all of the evidence of his mother’s murder case until he found a way to prove his innocence.
In this reimagining, Barry’s family is a cautionary tale for the dramatic levels of racially motivated arrests in Native American preserves, and in the US as a whole — we often talk about Black and Latinx racial profiling, but never Native American. Knowing that Barry’s father is innocent and framed yet never gets due process is a great example of this.
As an adult, Barry’s life of searching for answers about his mother led him to become a forensic scientist for the Central City Police Department, facing discrimination in the workplace and some even stating that he’s the Iroquoian murderer’s kid.
Barry became a CSI/forensic scientist not just to try to prove his dad’s innocence, but because of his keen sense of justice and belief that forensic science can overcome, at least to a small degree, the systemic biases against BIPOC by law enforcement. The science can exonerate just as much as it can incriminate, and being someone who is looking at evidence with an objective eye ensures that what happened to his dad won’t happen to anyone else. At least not on his watch.
But as the years in prison had worn on him, Henry gave up hope. Breaking down in tears, he tells his son that he committed the crime, and that he should let him go and move on with his life. Realizing that all of his efforts had been for nothing, angered and depressed Barry. He returns to his lab in the midst of a fierce thunderstorm, and Barry angrily tears his lab apart.
Suddenly, a bolt of lightning crashes through his lab’s window, striking him in the chest, and causing him to knock over a shelf of chemical vials and douse himself. After a four-month coma, Barry awakens with strange new powers, setting him on the first steps to becoming “The Flash.”
Over the years, Barry has had many adventures, and his story has touched the lives of nearly every hero, across time, space, and universes. This reimagined origin is only part of the story.
The reimagining of the Flash through a Native American lens also encompasses a reimagining of the Speed Force.
The Great Spirit, also known as the Great Mystery, is often referred to as the God of Indigenous citizens and is considered the God of creation, history, and eternity. The Speed Force is The Great Spirit’s earthly mediator for facilitating communication between humans and such things as Time, Energy, Nature, and Balance.
The Speed Force cultivates and relies on all life forces as a symbiotic relationship between all the forms of energy, and the Flash, or any carrier of the Speed Force, is usually regarded as a herald or speaker for The Great Spirit.
Sometimes, one of these speedster heralds is cast in the role of “Chosen One,” responsible for protecting the very nature of their mediation between the material world and the energies that bind the Multiverse, while also being provided the ability to manipulate it or be corrupted by it (see, for example, Zoom).
As there are many aspects of the Speed Force and its relationship with the Great Spirit, there are also many heralds. The Great Spirit often takes a personal interest in world affairs and might regularly intervene in the lives of human beings. This allows Barry to make mistakes and embark upon adventures across time and space, learning from those mistakes along the way and encountering other speedsters as he traverses the Speed Force, establishing legend of the Indigenous Speedster known as The Flash.
This reimagining also comes with a fancast — Jerry Wolf as Native American Barry Allen.
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