A still from Reservation Dogs. Courtesy of Hulu.
WORDS BY YESSENIA FUNES
Dallas Goldtooth still remembers the first time voters elected Donald Trump to the White House. It was 2016, and the 41-year-old Mdewakanton Dakota and Diné Indigenous activist-turned-actor was deep into the Standing Rock struggle against the Dakota Access oil pipeline in North Dakota. Goldtooth spent about nine months off and on at Standing Rock. He could usually be found live streaming to Facebook on what protesters called Facebook Hill or Media Hill, the only location with reception on the stretch of land where organizers had set up camp. That’s where he was on Tuesday, November 8, 2016.
The night air was freezing. That month, temperatures dipped as low as 19 degrees Fahrenheit. Goldtooth was with Nick Tilsen, president and founder of the Indigenous organization NDN Collective. They sat together in a car listening to the radio, the National Guard’s light towers blaring down on them from above. Then, the news called it: Trump was going to be the 45th president of the United States.
“There was no gasp or, Oh, my god, we were totally surprised!” Goldtooth told me in the days following Trump’s second victory. “It was this kind of silent resignation of, Well, let’s get ready for the next hit.”
And Goldtooth did. As the former Keep It in the Ground campaign organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), he rallied against President Trump’s attempts to push through the 1,172-mile-long Dakota Access pipeline and to revive the Keystone XL oil pipeline during his first term. But the hits kept coming, and they haven’t stopped: Dakota Access went into operation in June 2017, and although activists stopped Keystone XL in the courts, the president-elect is interested in bringing it back this second time around.
Goldtooth, who rose to fame after starring in and writing for the hit FX show Reservation Dogs, doesn’t plan to sit on the sidelines. Whether on a movie set or on the streets, he will always be in service to community. That, after all, has always been his lifelong dream—not winning an Emmy or Oscar. And the need for service among Indigenous communities has never subsided, not under a Republican or Democratic president.
“From the perspective of the colonized, from the perspective of Native peoples in America, no matter who is in office, we are facing an opposition that is counter to the goals of Indigenous sovereignty,” he said.
Fighting for Indigenous sovereignty remains the mission. This Election Day, Goldtooth was yet again among community. He was at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, to help the Seminole Tribe raise awareness of their singular display at the theme park’s Epcot American Heritage exhibit. “They literally had to fight to have one little glass case to acknowledge Native peoples of Florida by Disney,” Goldtooth told me.
Some actors in Hollywood may hesitate to criticize Disney, whose films made up over a quarter of the box office revenue last year in the U.S. and Canada, but Goldtooth has never been one to shy away from the facts. His authenticity and genuine spirit are what made him such an effective organizer—he knows how to connect and how to challenge. It’s in his blood.
“From the perspective of Native peoples in America, no matter who is in office, we are facing an opposition that is counter to the goals of Indigenous sovereignty.”
His dad, Tom BK Goldtooth, is a leading global activist who has served as the first executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network. Tom would regularly bring his son along to meetings and conferences. That’s when Ozawa Bineshi Albert, a Yuchi and Anishinaabe Indigenous climate justice organizer, first met Goldtooth. She described him as an “always smiling, really helpful, very polite, kind of funny, really chatty, talkative kind of kid.”
It wasn’t until Goldtooth entered his 20s that he and Albert bonded over their organizing. Goldtooth joined IEN in 2014 when the organization was trying to build a multiracial coalition between Native and non-Native people against the Keystone XL pipeline. He helped mobilize what was, at the time, the largest climate rally in U.S. history. Those wins aren’t what stand out most to Albert about their time working together, though.
“One of the things I appreciate about Dallas… is just the medicine that is generated by not just telling stories, but also being able to laugh,” Albert shared. “We need that to be able to sustain the work.”
It makes sense when you consider that Goldtooth was doing comedy for about four years before shifting into environmental organizing. “I was Indian famous even then,” he joked about the moment he entered the Keystone XL battle. “That’s what also made it a bit easier for me and my organizing within Native communities… People already knew me as a comedian, and then I came in as an organizer.”
He and four of his friends began performing skits as The 1491s in 2009 when they uploaded their first YouTube video: a spoof on Twilight called “New Moon Wolf Pack Audition.” The 1491s member Bobby “Due” Wilson, who is Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota, still remembers filming that skit. He had the keys to an office where they recorded the video after hours. “I had never done nothing like that before,” he reminisced on the phone. “It was so fun. The atmosphere was very positive. Everybody was cracking up.” They went on to do live shows at powwows and Indigenous community gatherings. Wilson said he always felt like Goldtooth was their “headman.”
“He’s the guy with the voice and the face that you can put on a horseback to tell the world whatever is on our mind—and people would listen,” Wilson said.
Goldtooth’s big break came nearly 10 years after that first YouTube video when his groupmate from The 1491s, Sterlin Harjo, landed his show Reservation Dogs with FX. Harjo asked his day ones to join him, and the show went on to earn five Emmy nominations. Looking back at the group’s old videos, it’s impossible to ignore the hilarious parallels between their skits and the writing on Reservation Dogs.
The 1491s weren’t the only ones that helped Goldtooth transition from activist to actor. He attributes his sense of humor to his mom, Hope Two Hearts, who has never let the dark moments dim her light. “She’s had a very, very hard life growing up, and I think that really, really influenced me because she never shied away from talking about her traumas and her childhood,” Goldtooth said. As a kid, Goldtooth would have serious conversations with his mom about her exposure to alcoholism and abuse, but they would also clown off together and have fun. Little did his mother know she was planting the seeds for her son to share her light with the world.
“Comedy is an essential survival mechanism for many of our people. It’s really central for us to lean into that joy and lean into the light of our ancestors and bring it forth.”
“Because of all her traumatic experiences, her childhood, I always grew up thinking, Why isn’t she more jaded? Why isn’t she more angry at the world?” Goldtooth said. “She never was. She never is. She is so positive about life. It was her active decision to respond to her experiences in that way.”
Goldtooth has mastered an exceptional skill: how to balance the silly and the serious both in his activism and acting. Since Reservation Dogs, he’s been cast in drama and horror roles, including Fallout, Seeds, and Rez Ball, which chronicles an Indigenous basketball team from New Mexico. Goldtooth used to play on his high school basketball team. “I suck at basketball,” he laughed. “I was really, really, really bad.” He’d warm up ahead of games while playing “Look at Us” by John Trudell, a Santee Dakota activist and artist who has inspired Goldtooth’s own art and activism.
“We see your technological society devour you before your very eyes,” Trudell says in the song. “While you seek material advances, the sound of flowers dying carry messages through the wind, trying to tell you about the balance and your safety.”
Goldtooth knows he’s entering an industry that has the potential to ravish his spirit, as Trudell’s lyrics warn against, but he’s not doing any of this for the glitz or the glam. He’s doing it because his people deserve representation. Because he has fun doing it. Because art can shape hearts and minds, too. Goldtooth is committed to protecting his spirit. He doesn’t drink or smoke. He never has. His stepfather, Galen Drapeau Sr., was a Vietnam War veteran and medicine man who often treated people suffering from alcoholism. Goldtooth learned a lot from him before losing him to cancer four years ago—like how to be a man with empathy and care for others. “That’s the biggest lesson I learned from him,” Goldtooth shared. He brought this attitude to his work at IEN.
“We miss him,” said Ben Goloff, a senior climate campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity who worked closely with Goldtooth over the last few years. “But it’s great to know that he’s out there really offering his gifts in this way… He’s a great person in front of a mic and a camera. And he is also very conscious that that is a role and a privileged position.”
As Goldtooth steps into the limelight of Hollywood, he won’t forget his roots. He can’t. Trump is returning to the White House, so Goldtooth is back in organizing mode. He doesn’t yet know what the next step will look like, but he knows this: “People are fucking tired of politics… A lot of us are just tired of the seriousness of it all.”
Throughout history, people across the globe have looked to songs and dance, jokes and laughter to push through the long nights. “Comedy is an essential survival mechanism for many of our people,” Goldtooth said. “It’s really central for us to lean into that joy and lean into the light of our ancestors and bring it forth.”
So that’s what Goldtooth will do. He’ll make us laugh. He’ll make us cry. He’ll help us hold on a little while longer.
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Dallas Goldtooth Won’t Back Down—at Standing Rock Then, or in Hollywood Now
