An interview with 3 ‘Reservation Dogs’ actors, writers from Minnesota

FX’s hit show “Reservation Dogs” is coming to a close this week but in its three seasons it has been a breakthrough for Native representation in mainstream media.

That’s thanks, in part, to creatives who are members of Indigenous communities in Minnesota. Dallas Goldtooth, Migizi Pensoneau and Bobby Wilson, who are actors, writers and producers on the show, all hail from Dakota and Ojibwe communities in Minnesota, urban and rural. They’re also all close friends and collaborators who have performed together for more than decade in the comedy group The 1491s.

They spoke to Minnesota Now host Cathy Wurzer.

Fans can see Wilson on Oct. 2 at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, where he will host an artist talk at 6 p.m. in the Great Hall.

For the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or read the transcript below. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. Note: This interview took place during the writer’s strike, so the three did not talk about the show specifically.

You lampoon Indian stereotypes fostered by the dominant culture and you are dead-on funny. For folks that are not familiar, describe Indian humor.

Migizi Pensoneau: I think it’s just humor. Indian humor is just people’s humor. Bobby and I were just talking about this earlier today — because Indian country is so wide and vast, our experiences growing up in Minnesota are very different than the experiences we have written in “Reservation Dogs.”

A part of that though, the reason why there is a connection all across Indian country is really we all have a similar relationship to white America … we have a lot of shared experiences with colonization in this country.

So a lot of that is kind of, sardonic, Black humor, laughing in the face of genocide — that whole thing.

Bobby Wilson: I shouldn't call it always in opposition to, but it is often critical of the interactions with non-Indigenous people, as Migizi said, in colonization and things around that.

How did growing up in Minnesota play into your comedy, in your storytelling or your experiences?

Dallas Goldtooth: I claim that I grew up both on the south side of Minneapolis during the summers with my dad and Migizi and everything, but in the school year, I lived down in southwest Minnesota. A lot of our comedy is heavily influenced by how we interact with the greater settler society.

I grew up around farm kids. It was a bunch of Indians surrounded by a bunch of white farm kids in southwest Minnesota and the constant interaction with “Minnesota Nice” and how uncomfortable white folks get in Minnesota about certain issues is hilarious to me.

I think that it has influenced me and has encouraged me to always be willing to push the buttons because I imagine what would make a white Lutheran in central Minnesota uncomfortable and let's go for that.

What do you mean by that?

Dallas Goldtooth: Having grown up in Minnesota, I feel like there’s a certain expectation about what can be talked about in the public space and what shouldn't be talked about. We as Native people in Minnesota are on the fringes as it is. Whether we're invisible or we're the tourist icons that people like to go visit up north for their summer cottages, either way, we're not seen as a part of that mainstream and so I feel like I have greater liberties to critique, make fun or tease the culture that I'm surrounded by.

Bobby Wilson: This is why I love the creative consortium that the three of us have — additionally with some of our other friends who aren't from Minnesota — is the differences in the spaces we grew up in. For me, I grew up around the Twin Cities, bounced around a lot of shelters, lived in a lot of people's basements on some air mattresses, you know.

My interactions with white settler society across the Twin Cities has predominantly been systemic. I was sentenced to a boy's home for a couple of years and I had the privilege of writing about it for “Reservation Dogs” season two. That Minnesota nice thing is always a — I hate it. I hate it so very much because I always associate it with a state trooper beating my face in and then kind of blaming me for it and being like, well, you know, “I'm not the bad guy here.”

And simultaneously also just as an artist working within a lot of the art spaces around the Twin Cities, Juxtaposition Arts, COMPAS arts, over most of my youth — it really influenced sort of the way that I can interact with it.

Dallas Goldtooth: I never realized this, but between the three of us we have a commonality of having lived in Minneapolis or the Twin Cities area and we have family who lives there. I predominantly grew up in southwest Minnesota, Migizi is northern Minnesota, Bobby is in the Twin Cities. We all pull from many different references, right? So it's I think that's the advantage of all of us. Like we really do represent Minnesota. You guys are welcome. You're welcome, Minnesota.

Whether it's for your personally or for your community or for your society, what are some of those barriers you think you guys have broken?

Migizi Pensoneau: We've done it together as a group and that's one of the interesting things. So we have the two that aren't from Minnesota in our group, they are from Oklahoma … but we've managed to stick together as friends and so far … we'll see what happens, talk to us in a couple of years.

But we've managed to continue to work together in a way that's incredibly positive. And a lot of that, especially as we're getting into like our “Reservation Dogs” stuff these last few years, a lot of this was led by our friend Sterlin Harjo.

We did it all the time with like, you know, prayers in the morning, prayers before we started songs, like we did everything in the ways that we were sort of taught and some of those things that sort of bring us together as Indian people are some of these traditions, like walking forward in the work that we do in a thoughtful and spiritual way.

I don't know that anybody else is doing the same thing, at least to that sort of level. What I'm saying is that we are spiritually better than everybody else. And we've broken that barrier pretty hard. But no, I mean, we’ve tried to maintain spiritual and cultural integrity in everything that we do.

We joke around all the time, but we are absolutely serious about making sure that the work that we put out in the world is thoughtful and is not flippant, even though, you know, the stuff we say off the cuff definitely is. But the things that we deal with, both in our sketches and in the work that we do on “Reservation Dogs,” is very heavy and there are people that are, you know, some of the subject matter is really intense and we don't go into that lightly.

So having that sort of cultural and spiritual grounding to make sure that carries across through all of what we do, I don't know anybody else that does that … we’ve maintained our integrity in the work that we do.

Dallas, do you agree with your friend, Migizi?

Dallas Goldtooth: Yes, I do. I think that maybe one other aspect is that through the process of writing “Reservation Dogs” and also working on other projects now, we've broken that barrier of, like, we've been told that one, in many ways, whether it's direct or indirect, that our stories as Native people don't matter.

I think that we as writers are breaking that barrier, saying, no, Native stories told by Native people, acted by Native actors and actresses not only have impact for us as community, but are meaningful to everybody. People really can enjoy them and that they are worthy of investment and worthy of support.

Growing up in a dominant culture, we're often taught that, hey, you have to change your ways to fit to the mold that is the mainstream, that is colonization. What we're trying to do is say, I was gonna use a four-letter word, a sacred four-letter word, and I'm not gonna say it, but F that, you know, we are gonna be doing it on our own, in our own terms. And has maybe even, it has a greater impact than anything that could else be said.

What have you heard from folks both inside and outside the Native community about the impact your work is having?

Bobby Wilson: I've heard a lot of really fantastic positive reception, all the stuff that we've been doing … I think it is really quality work. And putting it on like a larger platform, really an international platform. I mean, I've got a homie in Germany that texted me that he was watching “Reservation Dogs” with his family and I was like, God dang, you know? Like, that's wild, it's really fantastic.

I also love hearing folks who haven't watched the show at all and just tell me that, you know, it's on the list. I get that a lot. ‘Ah, I heard really good things about that.’ So people are hearing good things.

The most important thing for me is if we're all satisfied with the work. I think probably every artist feels that way, though. People keep telling us it's really great and I love that, I love to hear it. But, you know, we're always trying to hold ourselves to as high a standard as possible.

This might be a stupid question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. When will you guys know you've made it?

Migizi Pensoneau: Here's what I know, here's how I know that I've probably made it enough, is that my own community up in Red Lake hasn't asked me to come be a part of anything yet. And I think if they ever ask me to come be a part of everything and to like come and speak to the youth up there, I will know then that I've peaked and I'm past my prime, that I'm obsolete. Your own community should not be asking you to do anything. Right now I'm hated enough and that's fine.

Do you have any worries on what's next for Indigenous representation after the SAG-AFTRA strike ends?

Bobby Wilson: I mean, for me, I was worried about it before it even started, you know? I hate to break the momentum but it took like 150 damn years since the invention of the camera to give Indians a TV show.

I'm always worried about it but I think we have to be. There's still stuff coming out that's written by non-Native people, that's acted by non-Native people, that's supposedly about us. There's always a space for it and for us to go in there and to do our own work together and also collaborate with all the other amazing, phenomenal Indigenous talent. There’s some really amazing people working on stuff.

Dallas Goldtooth: No matter what, we're still part of a colonial project. We gotta remain vigilant at all times. Minnesota may change the name of Sibley Park, but they're still going to do some racist stuff. And so we're always going to be on the edge.

I have a worry that the studios are gonna say “hey, we don't have enough money as much as we did before because we got to pay you guys a living wage now,” and oftentimes it's those on the margins, right, the Indigenous folks, Black folks, other communities of color who end up getting the cut first. So that's the worry I got. But I believe that we've proven that we can tell good stories that people are invested in and I have a lot of faith in them.