SYNOPSIS:

Skinwalker is TV series about a twelve-year-old Native American boy from a reservation in Oklahoma. The boy has known for years that he is a skinwalker, the Native American name for a shapeshifter. When necessary, he can assume the form of his spirit animal, a cat...any kind of cat, so at times he shifts to a common house cat, but when needed he can shift to a cougar, panther, lion, or even a tiger, since they are all in the same family. Nathan comes from a family of shifters. The ability to shift has been passed down from generation to generation. His grandmother, his caretaker, is also his mentor. She explains that there are two types of skinwalkers, the good kind who uses his ability as a gift to help others. If he goes down the wrong path, he can end up being the bad kind that ends up killing other human beings. This only happens when the evil side overcomes the good side, and the shifter is overtaken by the power, rendering him or her under the complete control of the power. We learn all of these things over the course of the episodes through flashback to when Nathan is with his grandmother or conversations with people he is able to trust. Nathan has flasbacks from time to time where he re-learns the life-lessons his grandmother tells him. He flashes back to the old woman's bedroom or the hospital room where Nathan is sitting with her. Before the old woman dies, Nathan is picked up by social services and sent to foster care. He is physically abused in the home, and when his Grandmother dies, he decides he is not going back to the home and runs away. We find him in Blue Springs, Mississippi in the pilot episode. In the initial episode, Nathan is taken in by Shelby Cates, a kind old farmer living near Blue Springs, Mississippi, and he is witness to the old man's murder. When word gets out that a small boy has been seen around Shelby's farm the word goes out and Nathan is picked up in a nearby town. Nathan is befriended by someone who can see a person's true 'shape' and she urges Nathan to tell the Sheriff what he's seen. Of course, Nathan is still scheduled to be transported back to Oklahoma to return to child care there, until he assumes the shape of a small cat and slips away.