CULTURE
SAY HELLO TO DEVERY JACOBS
NOVEMBER 2, 2021
-
WORDS
by KRISTOPHER FRASER
PHOTOS
COURTESY of AARON JAY YOUNG
Devery Jacobs has been making waves with her starring role on FX’s Reservation Dogs, a comedy about four Indigenous teenagers in rural Oklahoma who aspire to get out of their hometown. As a longtime activist for Indigenous rights and representation, she felt that a show like this was long overdue. Jacobs is part of a crop of queer BIPOC actors who are changing the game for representation on television and taking no prisoners in the process. The activist, actor, and writer spoke with AS IF Magazine about BIPOC representation in the media, why a show like Reservation Dogs is so revolutionary, and how she hopes to continue creating stories to help the Indigenous community.
Devery Jacobs
AS IF: Talk to me about how you came to be involved with the project Reservation Dogs and how the project came to be in general? The show is really a first of its kind in terms of Native American and Indigenous representation.
Devery Jacobs: I came to this project the typical way. I got an audition, but when reading the casting breakdown and seeing who was involved in it, I knew I had to be a part of the show. Sterlin Harjo is a Native American filmmaker who I’ve known now for many years, and we had the opportunity to hang out in Vancouver while we were both working on different shows. The Native film community is so tiny, so hearing that he was making a project with Taika Waititi, whose 2010 film Boy is one of my favorite films of all time, Reservation Dogs sounded like the Native American version of Boy, I just knew that I needed to play a word in it and be a part of this show.
Reservation Dogs came to be in a less typical way in how projects are usually made. In this process, it was Taika Waititi who has a first-look deal with FX who approach Sterlin, because they both came up in the Native Sundance lab and had been friends since 2005. They are both independent filmmakers who were Indigenous kids from different parts of the world. Taika approached Sterlin saying, “Hey, let’s create a show together!” Three days later it was greenlit by FX, and they hit the ground running. It seems so appropriate to me that it was an Indigenous person wanting to open a door for their peers who they came up with, rather than it coming from a network in search of telling diverse stories or stories of inclusivity. It was more of an organic process of two Native guys from different communities just wanting to get together and create work that they find funny and stuff that they are proud of.
How do you think the show does a very good job of authentically telling the Native American stories that Native American experiences with being such a groundbreaking show in terms of that type of representation?
It does such a good job by not thinking about it being representative of all Indigenous people. Indigenous people are not a monolith, especially across the world but even in North America, there are 500 + different tribes and nations. Even all of us that came to work on the show have all come from different communities, reservations, and backgrounds. We couldn’t think about any representation when we were creating the show because at the end of the day, we had to make sure we were telling a human story, and we’re drawing from the place that reflected Sterlin’s life and upbringing in Oklahoma. By getting so specific and by keeping the scope so small we were able to honor these characters and these stories and make the project for ourselves and our communities as opposed to explaining it for non-Indigenous people. I think that’s what ended up making the show so successful.
“It seems so appropriate to me that it was an Indigenous person wanting to open a door for their peers who they came up with, rather than it coming from a network in search of telling diverse stories or stories of inclusivity.”
–Devery Jacobs–
