Gary Robinson has worked closely with Native American tribes for 45 years, but his cultural heritage wasn’t a big part of his upbringing. He was a city boy from Texas and doesn’t remember his parents taking interest in their Native culture.
“I had a couple of generations of people who ran from it because in the late 1800s [and] early 1900s that was lumped in with all the other brown and Black people that were not considered first-class citizens,” the author, film director, and film producer told the Sun. “So, anybody that was of Native blood who could get away with just ignoring it and denying it did.”
Re-learning the history
To buy Gary Robinson’s books, visit the gift shop at the Santa Ynez Chumash Museum and Cultural Center (3500 Numancia St.) or visit amazon.com. Check his website, imaginative-content.com, for updates on upcoming projects.
The same thing was happening in California, he went on, where people were killed for being Native American.
“It’s not an uncommon history,” Robinson said.
In college, Robinson’s curiosity toward his Choctaw and Cherokee heritage sprouted. Researching Native history became his central passion and the core of his work.
“I wanted my skills and career to be dedicated to overcoming stereotypes and being about true stories and real people,” Robinson said.
For the past 23 years, Robinson has lived in Santa Ynez on the Chumash reservation with his wife.
Though he wasn’t surrounded by Native culture when he was young, he was immersed in the media landscape of the era. Robinson remembers analyzing lots of movies as a kid (noting the stereotypical portrayals of Natives) and visiting the radio station on the weekend, where his dad worked. Those memories remained in the back of his mind, coming to the forefront periodically as he navigated a career in media, which is ongoing.
Learning and teaching about Indigenous communities also taught Robinson about adjacent environmental concerns, a topic he’s taken on in his latest graphic novel set to release on Earth Day in 2026. The Rise of Plasti Kong is about a lab experiment gone awry, creating a plastic monster and an army of microplastics. There’ll also be an accompanying video game, which is under development in India.
“The underlying theme is plastic pollution is a monster that we have to deal with,” he explained.
The Rise of Plasti Kong and his next children’s book, Welcome to Make-Believe Land, are the first works under his new company, Imaginative Content. Robinson started the company earlier this year, setting out to encompass multicultural and environmental topics in his future projects.
Welcome to Make-Believe Land, a book Robinson wrote with his daughter, is scheduled for publication next year. The story is meant to spark the imaginations of young readers.
With 20 books to his name, the author likes writing for a young audience because he wants to instill a better understanding of who Native people are, rather than allowing misconceptions and stereotypes to persist.
“Parents carried those misunderstandings with them and would pass them down,” he said. “You got to chip away at the younger generations to grow up with a better understanding. So, it’s a slow, kind of a tedious process, but that’s the only way it can happen.”
Throughout his career, he’s been involved with directing and producing 50 films of various lengths about Indigenous experiences. Topics included the emotional trauma of war and transportation issues in tribal communities. Five were documentaries that appeared on the Public Broadcasting Service and the Turner Network.
It’s hard for him to put the joy of filmmaking into words. Seeing something from his mind come to fruition through the camera lens and in the editing bay is creatively satisfying, especially when it comes to sharing what history lessons hid for so long.
“Often you are striking new ground, covering a unique path to telling a story that hadn’t been told on a very large basis,” he said.
A turning point came in 2008 when he used documentary research to publish a book, From Warriors to Soldiers. After that, he tapered away from producing and focused more on written media.
Perhaps what he’s most proud of is writing the Lands of our Ancestors stories, published between 2016 and 2018. The three-part historical fiction series follows three generations of a Chumash family throughout California history from the mission era up to the early years of statehood. He adapted the material to be used in fourth grade history lessons about Native Americans, which local teachers used in their classrooms for about five years up until recently.
“Of all the things that I’ve done, I’m very proud of that,” Robinson said. “It’s very unique. Nothing else ever was written and published like it.”
The series was a huge undertaking, blending the educational requirements and history from Chumash elders, whom he’d gotten to know through a press relations job with the tribe.
Like all his projects, it may never have seen the light of day without the discovery of his own culture, which he “couldn’t do anything but embrace.”
Reach Staff Writer Madison White at mwhite@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 25, 2025 – Jan 1, 2026.