RESERVATION DOGS created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi, with Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Paulina Alexis and Lane Factor. Season two premieres on Disney+ Canada on September 7.
There’s a scene in Reservation Dogs season two where Elora Danan – the wounded but tough teen played by Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs – is on the run alongside Elva Guerra’s Jackie from hillbillies with shotguns. The two characters are stranded and desperate after a string of unfortunate events left them in the middle of the country without a dollar or water. They try to steal a car from a farm, which is how they end up with the hillbillies on their tail.
The sequence plays out at the beginning of episode two and comes from an old feature idea about runaways from series creator Sterlin Harjo. It has a Coen Brothers-ish strain of absurd dark comedy. But it also recalls a real-life tragedy. Remember that Colten Boushie was killed in similar circumstances: a flat tire and a trespass led to a death sentence by a white farmer that was justified by an all-white jury in Saskatchewan.
“I don’t know that we were actively making a comment on Colten Boushie, his experience and his family’s loss,” says Jacobs, on a Zoom call from Atlanta. “But it’s definitely something that hits close to home. And it is something that we can all relate to: being little shit kids who are at the end of their rope and are desperately trying to reach out to get away and being met with people like that.”
There are other kinds of people in the episode too, like a charitable but also annoying Christian woman who doesn’t rush to call the police or take justice into her own hands when Elora Danan and Jackie tax her truck. The episode’s journey, which begins with those shotgun-wielding hillbillies threatening to kill, ends on a moving note of community support.
I won’t reveal who, but characters from the first season who could have landed the Rez Dogs in jail for a similar trespass instead choose to uplift these kids while keeping them out of the carceral system. When I bring that up, Jacobs thinks back on her time before acting, being with her community in Kahnawà:ke and also working at the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal.
“There is an understanding that calling the police is a last resort because of its implications of what it means for our community members.”
Jacobs is speaking to NOW from Atlanta, where she’s shooting the new Marvel series Echo. She’s “sworn to secrecy” when it comes to that series, but does share that it’s giving her the opportunity to reunite with Navajo writer and filmmaker Sydney Freeland, who she already worked with on Indigenous-led series Rutherford Falls and Reservation Dogs.
“This is our third project back-to-back.”
Jacobs has also graduated to the writers room on Reservation Dogs. She now has a hand in shaping the comedy series about teens from Muscogee Creek Nation who are grappling with intergenerational trauma and the very recent suicide of a close friend, but find healing in tradition, community and a hearty laugh.
“Even though it’s a comedy, there is room for all genres in it because that’s how our communities operate,” says Jacobs. “We weave between comedy and tragedy or adventure with some teasing jokes thrown in.”
I was provided with the first four episodes from season two – the last of which, co-written by Jacobs and Harjo and helmed by Night Raiders director Danis Goulet – hit particularly hard, in a beautiful way. The episode reminds me of Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock, where there barely seems to be a plot and yet there’s so much to chew on. Both Lovers Rock and this particular episode of Reservation Dogs are set at community gatherings. There are subtle unspoken tensions and sentiments observed in glances and gestures along with a meaningful emotional journey that can reflect the community’s struggle and generational trauma. And it all happens under the surface.
In Lovers Rock, the gathering is a reggae house party. In Reservation Dogs, it’s a funeral. Jacobs says she was thrilled to show us how the latter doesn’t have to be a dour ceremony.
“When somebody’s going at their time, when it’s time for them to make their journey, it’s honestly some of the best times,” says Jacobs, noticing the huge difference between funerals within Indigenous communities and outside of them. “There will be family members and community members around at all hours. It’s a really beautiful hands-on experience for us.
“I was so passionate about that when we were in the writers’ room, getting a chance to show that in our series. Sterlin ended up giving me the episode to co-write with him. Danis Goulet has just done such an incredible job, how much care she put into its direction and into honouring the words that we wrote on the page. It was such a respectful process between the both of us as creatives on this. I’m just so grateful for her.”
Bringing Goulet into the Rez Dogs fold feels like a full-circle moment. The Cree and Métis director attended Sundance with series creators Harjo and Taika Waititi in the early 2000s, when they were all pushing to get Indigenous voices out. She also programmed their work during her tenure as executive director at imagineNATIVE. They were part of a community that continue to support each other (Waititi is executive producer on Night Raiders).
It’s just perfect then that the episode she directs in collaboration with them on Reservation Dogs is about a community gathering – featuring pretty much every character on the show including newcomers like Nathan Apodaca (aka TikTok sensation @doggface208). Reservation Dogs has always felt like a show that is made for and by a community that shows up for each other.
Another project Jacobs is a part of has a similar feel: This Place. The film, which Jacobs calls a “five-year labour of love,” was part of the inaugural Telefilm Talent To Watch program and is finally having its world premiere at TIFF in September. It’s a queer romance starring Jacobs as a Mohawk woman searching for her estranged Iranian father, and Priya Guns as a Tamil-Canadian whose refugee father falls ill. This Place is directed by Tamil-Canadian V.T. Nayani, but feels like a gathering of ideas about identity, colonialism and shared traumas that come from its cabal of co-writers (Nayani, Jacobs and Golshan Abdmoulaie) and their communities.
“Both This Place and Reservation Dogs were such collaborative efforts and were very much about communities coming together,” says Jacobs. “On Reservation Dogs, it’s all Indigenous writers from different corners of Turtle Island. For This Place, it was more a cross-collaboration and communion between different cultures, that being those of refugees – the Tamil and Iranian communities – and Kanien’kehá:ka Mohawk communities.
“It’s a film that could only ever take place in a city like Toronto.”
Listen to the whole conversation with Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs NOW What podcast available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or the player below.
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