Devery Jacobs Sees the Bigger Picture

Devery Jacobs, star of FX’s critically acclaimed series Reservation Dogs, is descended from generations of hell-raisers. Born in the wake of the 1990 Oka crisis in Mohawk Territory in Quebec, raised in Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory in Quebec, surrounded by Kahnawà:ke community and tradition, she carries her ancestors with her. They give her a sense of urgency, tenacity, and a yearning to tell impactful stories.

“Mohawks are known as shit-stirrers that are fiery, or loud, and are quick to throw blockades,” the 28-year-old New Hollywood inductee tells Teen Vogue via Zoom. In 1990, a standoff between the Canadian government and the Mohawk people ensued after the government made plans to expand a golf course into Mohawk territory — specifically, into their burial ground. The result was 78 days of blockades that ended in the termination of the expansion plan, but at the cost of hundreds of Mohawk civilian injuries. 

“I had a really inherently political upbringing….," Jacobs recalls. "It was a huge sense of responsibility that we all carried with us, and something that really shaped the cultural behavior of my community.” As she moves through Hollywood, with her creative projects and a burgeoning acting career, the fight for Indigenous and queer representation is at the forefront of everything she does.

In Reservation Dogs, Jacobs plays the lead role of Elora Danan. The series — cocreated by two Indigenous creatives, New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi and American filmmaker Sterlin Harjo — follows four Indigenous teenagers in Oklahoma as they scheme for a life beyond the reservation they grew up on. It’s an original and authentic portrayal of Indigenous teenage life, featuring nuanced characters reframed through colloquial humor that humanizes them in a way that Hollywood has previously failed to accomplish, taking them off the pedestal of stereotypes where white America has placed them for centuries. The wit and layered humor is relayed like a classic comedy gag: Waititi and Harjo put all of those stereotypes into a pie, and shove it right into the audience's face.

Jacobs describes herself as more “soft-spoken and mild-mannered,” but she talks with a quiet confidence about the freedom of living where she wants, as opposed to being tethered to New York or Los Angeles. It feels like a sort of retaliation against societal assumptions that one has to move to a big city to have a “successful career.” It’s also a way to remain rooted, although Jacobs already has a clear, committed sense of the path she’s on.

Jacobs and her character may not have much in common — “Elora Danan is way more badass than I could ever be” — but they’re both natural caretakers. Jacobs' innate desire to take care of her own has made her experience on Reservation Dogs all the more exciting. It was surreal: her first leading role, and the dream situation of a series starring Indigenous people, created by Indigenous people, about Indigenous teens, set to air on a mainstream platform. Waititi and Harjo not only opened the door to Indigenous creatives seeking a way into the entertainment industry, they worked to get as many folks as possible through that door. (The series is filmed in Harjo’s home state of Oklahoma, on Muscogee Nation.)

The casting was also significant for Jacobs' career path because she knew she would be given opportunities to be involved in her character’s development. As a multifaceted writer and filmmaker, it was a responsibility Jacobs was more than ready to take on. She has joined the writers room for the show’s forthcoming second season. “The whole reason why a show like Res Dogs exists is because it was through Indigenous kinship and collaboration,” she says, “as opposed to it coming from people in positions of power who are still white executives.”

“I was bullied growing up for wanting to be an actor," says Jacobs. "But I feel like as the younger generation is coming up — and I think this is happening across cultures — people are becoming way more inclusive and reflective and are working toward their mental health, [and] that my community's also seen a lot of positive change in terms of how people relate to each other.” 

For Jacobs, acting was a self-ignited interest, but in a community focused on cultural revitalization, with little support for the arts, she relied on her family of creative “black sheep” to help her achieve her goals. She credits her father for sparking her love of indie films and her mother for driving her, literally and figuratively, to audition for roles.

Those early values also gave her the courage to leave her reservation at age 20 to pursue a career in acting, and to discover aspects of her identity that she might not have been aware of otherwise, like her queerness. Jacobs points to a formative quote from Harriet the Spy: "Ole Golly says there are as many ways to live as there are people on the earth, and I shouldn't go round with blinders, but should see every way I can. Then I'll know what way I want to live and not just live like my family." In leaving her reservation, Jacobs found a sense of safety to explore her sexuality beyond the role of heteronormativity she had assumed earlier in her youth. 

It’s a complicated history: queerness and Indigenous culture. Due to the continued influence of Christianity and white settlers, Jacobs wasn’t exposed to a lot of openly queer people in her community while growing up. “Traditionally, in a lot of Indigenous cultures, queerness and gender queerness were not only natural, but sacred,” she says. “Even though we are now reclaiming our cultures, there's still a lot of residual homophobia and transphobia in my community from when the church had such an influence.” 

According to the Trevor Project, Indigenous queer youth are among those with the highest rates of suicide. Through meeting queer and Indigenous queer youth, specifically, everything started to click for Jacobs. She didn’t see a world in which she wouldn’t be out and proud. Her instinctual desire to help care for others expanded to include Indigenous queer youth, along with normalizing it further in her community. “It really reinforced the importance of being out and open and happy, and being who I am," she says. "It just told me that I was on the right track of making sure that there are more stories out there that show us who we are.”

For Jacobs, everything always comes back to her community. There’s a sense of purpose to her exploration: to return the stories to her family, and return the favor to her ancestors, and pass along what she can to the next generation. “It's this whole tie and an unspoken bond that is constantly connecting you to your community, which is incredible, and I'm sure a reason why we've survived 500 years of colonization,” she says. “There's a lot of responsibilities that come with that, which can be pretty heavy…. That's one of the hardships of being one of the first, is that there should have been more of us at this point in 2022; there should have been more Indigenous stories told and there haven't been. All of it is coming down on the few that are out there.”

But she knows what will happen if she doesn’t fight for something better for herself and her family, for portrayals of Indigenous people onscreen, for a world where her Indigenous identity doesn’t determine every aspect of how she’s perceived. Early on in her career, as she began auditioning, she was shocked at how much objectification she experienced during casting calls. “They were only looking for Pocahontas-type roles, and they were only looking for historic stories,” Jacobs says. “I remember having to sit my agents down, being like, ‘If I’m going to do a sex scene, it’s not going to be in buckskin.’”

“I feel like a part of me became a little bit hardened and knew it would be a fight to get our true stories told, as opposed to a Western perspective of what it means to be an Indigenous woman,” she continues. But Reservation Dogs brought a faster shift than she ever could have anticipated. “For so long, I had been told by the industry that I didn't look Native enough, or that my resi accent specified me too much. That I didn't fit their idea of what Native people should be and that Native stories wouldn't sell. Then to have a show like Res Dogs come out, all of a sudden it reaffirmed what I always knew, which is [that] being Native is f*cking awesome and cool, and our stories are hilarious.” 

Meanwhile, Reservation Dogs also won the award for best ensemble cast and best new scripted series at the 2022 Film Independent Spirit Awards. “To see it being rewarded for the very thing that I faced discrimination over was jarring," says Jacobs. "I know it's still the very beginning; it's only one of two Native shows out there right now. But that's the thing that I wasn't anticipating, the fact that we could actually pull it off.”

Jacobs says all of this while sitting in a cabin somewhere between the Kahnawa:ke reservation and Montreal, the place where she feels most at home. She refuses to acclimate to warm L.A. weather, or to a career spent following rules written with a white, heteronormative, and, frankly, boring quill. She’s not motivated by fame or fortune; the twinkle in her eyes comes from something much brighter. There is only one way she sees herself succeeding in this industry: “I would like people to perceive me as a talented multihyphenate actor and filmmaker who is passionate about activism from her communities and is Kanien’kehá:ka and queer.” She will not falter.

CREDITS

Editor in Chief: Versha Sharma

Photographer/Director: Amy Harrity

Photo Assistant: Gal Harpaz

Director of Photography: Erynn Patrick

1st AC: Bobby Lamont

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