Right to left:Zoe, Anna, Bailey and Caitlin, the titular Mohawk girls
Bailey, Caitlin and Zoe are close friends on the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory in Quebec, Canada. They're joined by Anna, who's half Mohawk, coming in to reconnect with her heritage. However, they have to deal with many issues, including strong prejudice towards Mohawks of mixed heritage (plus being in relationships with outsiders) as they also handle their general travails with seeking love and belonging.Tropes:
- Age-Gap Romance: Caitlin's dad gets involved with Vicky, who's her age or so.
- Bondage Is Bad: Zoe gets into BDSM, with this being steadily shown as a symptom of sex addiction until she gets treatment at last.
- The Bully: Iostha is the leader of some bullying women in Kahnawake who police how others act and lead roudy protests against Mohawks in relationships with white people.
- But Not Too White:
- Anna, angry at being mistreated for being half white and acting differently from what's expected among most Mohawks, says she's more Mohawk than most of them due to many looking much more white. Bailey (who could pass for white herself), rebukes her for this, retorting that Mohawks come in all shapes and sizes. Anna had also earlier mistakenly thought that white people were in the bar, noting happily they got along with the Mohawks there... until she's hotly told all of them are Mohawk. Later on, she learns the band citizenship is determined through blood quantum, which means members have to be 50% Mohawk at least through ancestry, which Anna isn't (she has a white mother, and her dad has a non-native ancestor as well, thus she can't be a tribal member, which devastates her).
- Zoe's own mother laments (to her face) that she has more white looks than she expected, as Zoe's father has some white ancestry.
- Category Traitor: Bailey gets this reaction over dating Jack, who's white, due to the Mohawks long history of being mistreated by white people. Caitlin later also fears this too if she's found to be with Leon, who's black, and some Mohawks denounce any of their people in relationships like this.
- Chick Magnet: Thunder is constantly pursued by Mohawk women, which isn't surprising as he's both handsome and very kind.
- Child of Two Worlds: Anna, who has a white mother and Mohawk father, struggles with this at length. She won't be accepted by many Mohawk unless she's disclaimed more "white" attributes, but still isn't eligible for citizenship in the band due to having too much white ancestry. However, conforming means she steadily becomes meaner as its the rudest Mohawks demanding this, and in the series finale refuses to anymore, saying she's both-Mohawk, but also white.
- Disappointed in You: Sose, Bailey's father, accepts Anna fully when many other full-blooded Mohawks reject her due to being half white and thus cannot become a band citizen. He therefore chews her out when Anna joins a protest against a white woman there on the reserve with a Mohawk husband (which she'd done largely to fit in), noting they have a son, asking her how she's different from that boy.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: After they all go through tons of drama and struggle with finding happiness in who they are, everybody in the quartet finally manages to in the series finale. Anna has embraced being Mohawk and also white. Bailey is with James, and it seems manages to win over her community in doing so. Caitlin is happily single, vowing that any future man she's with will respect her. Zoe has Osterase, a very nice man, after struggling for a long time with sex addiction born of severe self-esteem issues, appearing to be much happier with herself.
- Everyone Has Standards: Watio supports the band law that bars non-members from living on the reserve, believing those living there in violation should be evicted. He still finds a mob gathering outside where a non-citizen (white woman) is living deplorable, especially with her child in the house, saying police should handle the matter legally, no one else.
- Fair Cop: Thunder is a very handsome man who's also a peacekeeper (i.e. a member of the Mohawk band's police force).
- Fish out of Water: Anna initially doesn't fit in well at all on the Mohawk reserve, with her manner and clothing style being more cheerful than women there consider right. She also gets flack for having a white mother.
- Forbidden Love: Mohawks being with any non-Mohawk in a relationship, according to many of their people, who view this basically as treason.
- Get Out!: Leon immediately orders Caitlin to leave after she's confessed her cheating.
- Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen: In a variation, Bailey, Caitlin, Anna and Zoe go to a camp where they improvise themselves a nude mud bath. While doing so, some teenage boys they mockingly rejected take their clothes as revenge.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Caitlin isn't happy when her friends note abortion would be one option after she gets pregnant (without actually using the word then), but don't pressure her. She ultimately decides on this after not liking how Butterhead, her boyfriend, treats his other kids and their moms, not wanting to be also like that. She has pretty mixed feelings about it though, and pretends this was a miscarriage since she's afraid of how people would react.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: Anna gets a lot of flack for only being half Mohawk, as she has a white mother, which she's deeply hurt by. She's regularly called "halfbreed" as an insult by many Mohawks. It turns out this is codified in the Mohawk band's law, with no one has less than a 50% blood quantum (overall Mohawk ancestry) considered one of them and eligible for membership.
- Hypocrite: Sose is one of the few Mohawks who supports Anna when she faces prejudice for her being half white. However, he then opposes Bailey being with a white man because children they have wouldn't be fully Mohawk and denied band rights. Still, he comes around by the end.
- Imagine Spot: Characters frequently imagine others' reactions to what they're saying or doing (and even occasionally their own), then the actual reaction is shown that's often different from this entirely.
- Internalized Categorism: Iostha, one of the Mohawk women most opposed to mixing with white people, admits she has a white grandmother after Anna rejects this prejudice in the series finale. She realizes the error of her ways, stating that it's messed up denying her own grandmother.
- Jerkass: A lot of the Mohawks give poor Anna (who's very nice and just trying to reconnect with her heritage) a huge amount of flack over not fitting in initially, acting blatantly rude to her face (plus disliking that she's half white). Many are rude in general, over basically anything, and won't spare anyone's feelings.
- Kissing Cousins: Bailey is initially dating Thunder in the pilot. She stops, freaking out after learning he's her second cousin.
- Let's Wait a While: Anna has a rule about not having sex with her boyfriend for three months, so she's certain he really likes her rather than simply wanting this. She breaks it with Thunder though, afraid other women will lure him away otherwise.
- Love Confession: Thunder confesses he loves Anna in Season 3, who tells him this too.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Bailey has sex with James on the floor of his art studio.
- Maligned Mixed Marriage:
- Most Mohawks really dislike anyone of their people dating a white person, due to the history of mistreatment by white people they've suffered over the years. Bailey hesitates to be with Jack, who's white, as a result. After she does and brings him to the reserve, they react with open hostility over this. Anyone who has children with a non-member and or marries them will also be kicked off the band roll, which lets them vote. Anna (whose own ancestry isn't Mohawk enough for membership) is appalled by it and calls this out.
- Non-Mohawk spouses or children of Mohawks also aren't allowed to live on the reserve, with many mentioned as being evicted during Season 3. In Season 4, some Mohawks protest outside the home of a mixed family, demanding that the man's wife (who is white) be evicted.
- It turns out if a Mohawk lives with a non-Mohawk off the reserve, the band will deny them the right to burial with their ancestors there after they die.
- Mistaken Nationality: Bailey looks fairly white, even though both of her parents are Mohawks, so she's repeatedly mistaken for this, to her resigned frustration.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Anna feels quite guilty after joining a protest to evict a white woman living on the Mohawk reserve, with a son by her Mohawk husband after Sose, Bailey's father, tells her that he's now deeply disappointed in her doing this as she has a white mother herself (he was among only a few full-blooded Mohawks to reject all prejudices toward outsiders, and accept her fully), noting the boy is mixed like her.
- Nice Guy:
- Anna is always friendly and nice to everyone at first, but gets dumped on nonetheless. She adopts the more tough manner of other Mohawk women to fit in.
- Thunder is unreservedly polite, kind and the only one to publicly defend Anna from other people.
- Ohserase is extremely kind and understanding, almost instantly forgiving Zoe after she had publicly been exposed as having cheated on him repeatedly. He's also the only one who stands with Bailey when she's denounced in the cafe for dating James, who's white.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Multiple characters note that many Mohawk people (though victims of racism for so long) are openly prejudiced against outsiders and those with mixed ancestry, calling them out for very similar attitudes (ones they even institutionalize in their laws).
- Parental Abandonment: Caitlin's mom is dead and had left her as a baby, while her dad's very negligent to her. His mother says it comes from being abused in one of the residential schools the native kids of his generation were sent to and that he can't show normal love after this.
- Parental Sexuality Squick: Caitlin is not at all happy to hear about her dad's sex life with his girlfriend, Vicky, especially not how much he pleases her as a lover.
- Persecution Flip: Anna views the discriminatory attitudes and laws of Mohawks toward those with less than 50% ancestry as racist itself in response to having suffered it themselves from white people, since though it's done for preserving their people, the practices just echo what they had suffered.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Anna finally denounces Iostha's prejudice in the series finale, and gives Iostha a self-realization by doing so.
- Secret Relationship: Bailey and Caitlin keep their non-Mohawk boyfriends a secret for some time due to the very negative attitudes many Mohawks have of relationships like this.
- Surprise Pregnancy: Caitlin gets unintentionally pregnant by Butterhead, thus setting off continued drama as at first he reacts badly, she then moves in with him but isn't happy and ultimately decides to have an abortion but has pretty mixed feelings about it.
- Sympathetic Adulterer: Caitlin and Bailey cheat on their partners, but remain sympathetic as a result of the guilt they feel along with the pressures they have.
- This Is Unforgivable!: Thunder is appalled by Anna disparaging her own mom for being white, and breaks up with her, saying he could never be with anyone who treats their mother badly.
- Threeway Sex: Zoe has sex with two guys together for stress relief.
