Walking Bear
Long before Lower Decks, Star Trek: The Animated Series provided a chance to bring much more variety to the crew of the Enterprise than the live-action Trek’s budget could at the time. We got Lieutenants M’Ress and Arex, alien bridge officers, unlike anything we’d ever seen in the show before. But the show also occasionally let the series strive for more of that egalitarian future Roddenberry’s vision purported to believe in, even if on-screen it came in fits and starts. Case in point: Ensign Dawson Walking Bear, Trek’s first Native American officer.
Ensign Walking Bear only appeared in one episode—“How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth”—but he played a vital role, navigating the history of the Kukulkan for the officers around him who couldn’t recognize its roots in some of Earth’s oldest civilizations and cultures.
https://gizmodo.com/star-trek-the-animated-series-must-watch-episodes-1843485524
