SOMETIMES, IF YOU’RE LUCKY, what you have done, what you cared about, what you tried to change – all of that is recognized, and maybe even rewarded.
You have told yourself, that recognition and reward, if it comes, will not change you. At least the part of you that is the essential you.
Jessica Matten has gotten the opportunity to test that idea.
Dark Winds, where she is cast as Bernadette Manuelito, is now shooting its fourth season. In a time-worn signal to the world that you have arrived, the cast was recently invited to the Biden White House.
Jessica’s Bernadette is an independent, defiant Native policewoman. She’s someone who is not on the fence about anything – its hard to take your eyes off of her.
She identifies with her character. She understands in a visceral way who Bernadette is. When Jessica describes calling on her ancestors before scenes, she knows – without a doubt – that she will draw strength from them. She knows they guide her and keep her in line with where she came from. So, she is becoming a leading actor in her time. And yet, she is still the same person she always was.
There’s this, too: she has become a star. And seems happy as a clam.
Tell me about your ancestors.
I’m the seventh generation up in Canada, where I’m from — we’re Red River Métis/Cree. That’s the Native side of our family. I am from the Métis Nation and Red River Métis Cree on my mother’s side, and Chinese and British on my father’s. I’m the direct descendant of Cuthbert Grant, who was a famous Métis leader of Canada, and his even more well-known cousin, Louis Riel. They sought justice for our people.
I’ve always held that heritage in high regard. I wondered why I’m drawn to playing tough characters on screen who are always seeking justice. Even outside of filming, I’ve always been a part of things within our communities that involve justice. It speaks to me on a very deep level. It stirs my soul. I know my life is designed to be in service of others, so everything I do is attached to that.
A month ago, my mother emailed me and said, I think you should know, too, that this is our other direct ancestor. My mother is the sixth great-granddaughter of Chief Wabasha, who was a (Dakota Sioux) chief in the States. It shows that this is Turtle Island, what we call North America, and there is no divide. To be a descendant of two chiefs, what an incredible blessing.
Just last November, we were summoned by the White House when the Biden Administration invited us. They wanted to do a screening of season three of Dark Winds. We were given a tour of the White House, and they have these lithograph portraits that I’ve collected since I was a kid. Those lithographs are of the chiefs in the same format that I just discovered my great-grandfather also has.
How did that feel to you?
Being at the White House? It doesn’t resonate with me. I think spiritually, I was raised to be spiritual and to place value there, so to be in this construct that a big portion of North America reveres, I honestly felt nothing, if I’m being very honest.
If anything, what I did feel was just gratitude to experience the moment with a cast and crew that I love so much who are family to me. It was more through the eyes of my co-workers Zahn (McClarnon) and Kiowa (Gordon) and Chris (Eyre). What it meant to them meant a lot more to me. I felt very grateful to be an observer of that time and space. That’s how, a lot of the times, I see myself — an observer in time and space. I’m here to fulfill the mission, and the mission being connected to finding out about this ancestor. It just reinforced the seventh-generation prophecy that so many Native people across Turtle Island believe in, which is verbally expressed through Crazy Horse.
The Seventh Generation prophecy?
This is the abridged Jess version of it, but it’s the prophecy originating with Crazy Horse that seven generations later, my people will rise again under the sacred tree through the arts and creativity. They will begin the healing process of our people and everything that was taken away from us. We are that generation.
You’re working on a hit show where most of the cast and crew is indigenous. It seems like this is a real moment for Native media.
I’m fortunate being raised in Canada where we’ve had an Aboriginal People’s Television Network for more than 20 years. Seeing Native people on TV series is nothing new for me. I feel like because of my upbringing in Canada, and then also being hired by those same showrunners to act in those shows, it has prepared me for coming over to the States and to be able to represent what everyone out here is trying to achieve. I’ve been trained to be prepared to help with this movement that’s now building not just in the States, but internationally and globally. No matter what, Hollywood is the satellite to the rest of the world in terms of storytelling. It’s taken everything up a notch, and I’m really, really honored to be a part of that.
Why do you think this eruption is happening now?
When the Black Lives Matter protests happened, I thought of our Black brothers and sisters opening the gate for us now: they’ve been pushing for so long. Because I do believe we’re all in this together. It was them paving the way for us to be able to rise. This is a land where they’ve experienced so much genocide and trauma for their people, and they are a larger community than indigenous peoples. I believe in my heart that this is going to open the floodgates for more exposure for indigenous people now. I do believe in the sacredness of the timing of things.
You are a Canadian working in the United States. It’s got to be a strange time to be here with this weird animosity toward Canada bubbling up.
I’m sitting in front of three Americans right now, and you guys do not represent at all what’s happening with the administration. That is what I’m feeling from the majority of Americans. I have yet to encounter one that actually believes in everything that this new political power is reinstating. The heart and the soul and the spirit is kind and good, and we see each other because we are all just souls, no matter what our culture and color of the skin. So I’m gonna go with what’s in front of me, and all that’s been presented to me is support, love, kindness, and steadfastness. Nothing is going to change that.
What is your experience of being part of Dark Winds?
I think Zahn, Kiowa and I, we were raised with certain traumas. Those traumas inform us how to play these characters. What you see on screen is coming from a place that we’ve all deeply experienced in our lives. As an actor, you have to draw from that. I do prayers in between filming where sometimes I just ask my ancestors if they could be with me through this. I swear it’s like a NOx kit of energy comes flooding in. I did that with the final scene in the movie Rez Ball. I ad-libbed a lot of that. Around the corner, I said, ancestors, can you be by my side for this one? This is the take. If you ask, we all have ancestors and spirit guides beside us. If you ask them to be with you in the moment, they come to you. That’s the spiritual part of me, where I was raised to believe these things. Because I believe in them, without doubt, they come.
There’s mythology and spirituality in the show, especially this season.
The Navajo culture is very different than any other Native culture that I’ve had the privilege to do research on or portray. There are elements where I have to seek advice because I don’t know the rituals or the prayers or their beliefs — there’s some stories in Navajo culture that you cannot speak about in the winter because you don’t want to awaken those things. You have to be so mindful and respectful of that. What we all have in common is the spiritual part. I was raised in traditional ceremony. We see things, we see in sweat. But even not in ceremony, some of us have the ability to see things.
I think the cool thing about Bernadette’s character is it’s very similar to me in real life, where I navigate life very rationally and very spiritually at the same time. I pay attention to the signs every single day. I understand messages come through people sometimes. Messages are all around us every single day, if you choose to look. Yet I have a science degree, so there’s also a very pragmatic part of my brain, like Bernadette, that needs to make sense of what she’s seeing. But it’s very instinctual and spiritual-based.
In that role, you’re a woman in a man’s world. What kind of preparation did you have to do to live in that person?
Previously, I was on a show with Jason Momoa, and I was the only female in his male group, beating the shit out of everyone.
You seem very comfortable beating the shit out of everyone!
I love it! It’s fun. See, I used to competitively spar. I think it’s ancestral in me, and it comes out like fire. It’s my lineage: justice and fighting for what’s right.
This character is clearly seeing evil, and she’s not going to do what her bosses are telling her to because she’s driven by something. What do you think that is?
I don’t think it’s a lot different from, as women in the present, how we’re still fighting for equal rights in the workplace, equal pay, all that. I don’t have to draw from a lot of research. It’s just a lived life. Any frustrations or ways of being bold that Bernadette is – she’s just a heightened version of how I wish I could be in my real life. I can’t pop a gun out or chase bad guys, per se. I think a lot of actors say this gives us an opportunity to live our fantasies.
The show is set in the early 1970s. Bernadette is dealing with is the systemic violence and exploitation of women. These are still issues that we’re dealing with today.
My mother, Theresa Ducharme, was one of the first people to start the initial inquiries into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women 20 years ago through the Sisters in Spirit initiative with the Mohawk attorney Beverly Jacobs. I grew up as a teenager exposed to a lot of undercover information of what was happening to our women and trying to understand why. My mother was part of that group that was responsible for educating the RCMP, our FBI equivalent, of how to become more informed of why indigenous people are being targeted in this way.
When I saw that Bernadette gets to explore this, I was like, I know this character. I know exactly how she’s going to feel. I know what she’s going to do. Because again, it’s a heated passion from my real life. And it shows that it’s cross-cultural. It’s not just Natives; it’s indigenous people worldwide experiencing all this. It’s very swept under the rug. But if you know in your heart you need to see this through, don’t let anyone stop you. That kind of the attitude and approach I took with Bernadette.
A big part of that show is the locations; it’s shot here in New Mexico.
I’ve traveled now to 35 countries, and I will say there is an energy on this land. The moment I stepped on it, that felt very different. I can’t pinpoint what it is, but it’s very healing. I understand why people come here and they decide to stay here.
I do this ritual when I’m driving to the studios. It doesn’t matter if it’s 3 AM and I haven’t slept for days. I’m so grateful for the mountains, the sky when I get off work and the sun is setting and the pink-purple skies. I’m so genuinely grateful. I say thank you.
It must be nice to feel that connection. I read you lived in 21 different places as a child. What was that like?
My mom is a product of her own Native upbringing, and she had a very eclectic life full of musicians and artists around her too. I don’t look at it as a negative. I think it’s just prepared me for this lifestyle of filming – it’s called the circus, right?
I believe we all choose our parents because they end up helping us to develop the person we’re meant to become, and we’ve got to figure it out on our own after that. It’s a training session of what’s yet to come. I look at my life, just surrounded by eclectic artists and creatives and people from all walks of life. I go between poverty and extreme wealth very easily and very comfortably. I think it is because of those 22 homes I’ve lived in at such a young age.
It’s 22, not 21?
Oh, it’s way more than that these days. It’s probably a hundred! I’m not fazed by what a person, financially or physically or materially, has at all. Humans are humans, and we’re all just trying to navigate this playing field to the best of what we were given or not given.
Long before I decided to get into the acting business, I was working at the Urban Native Youth Association on East Hastings, which is Vancouver’s Skid Row. I knew from a young age that everyone just wants a reason to wake up in the morning and to be seen and to be heard. I developed these little fashion and film programs to get them involved and to get them to feel seen. My mom had one of the first Native modeling agencies, so I grew up witnessing this. I don’t know anything different but to help my Native people. Those programs ended up becoming something where I developed my mother’s company with her, Lemon Cree. We traveled to the most isolated Native reserves across Canada that don’t have road access, clean drinking water, resources that are basic. I’ve seen apples sold for $25 in these communities.
If you didn’t have this experience, do you feel you could be so authentic?
I think we all lucked out where they picked an actor who happened to have this kind of experience. I definitely don’t seek it in order to inform a character because I feel like it’s a little sacrilege. I would never want to dishonor or disrespect anyone and make them feel like I’m coming in to be a spectator of their lives. I think it’s just serendipity that they chose an actress that happens to have done all this kind of crazy work.
When you go that far and deep, you’re doing it for yourself, for the show, for your crew. But you’re also in the position to be a role model.
I feel like the role model title is separate from acting in my mind. I feel like they’re two separate careers because I actively participate in trying to help heal my community. Then with acting, I feel like I’m a hired gun to memorize lines and do my job. They feel actually very separate to me. Yet I’m highly aware of the interwoven, connected layers of both.
Honestly, when I’m hired to act, I don’t go into a job thinking this is an opportunity to be a role model. I go into it thinking I’m going to give it my all and I’m going to research my ass off and I’m going to study my ass off. If you hire me, I want any producer, writer, director to know I’m going to show up super prepared, more so than they expect. That’s just me having that athlete mentality of, I don’t want to let anyone down. But most of all, I don’t want to let myself down. Part of growing in life is trying to up your own game all the time.
Dark Winds is a hit, and your celebrity must be growing. How weird has that been?
I will say it is a weird change. I was at the LAX airport and the security guard pulled me over. My natural instinct is get defensive. What? I didn’t do anything. I’m not smuggling coke! I made that joke, I just said it out loud. He’s like, no, I just wanted to say me and my family really like your show. And I was like, oh, my God. I’m an asshole. It’s not good for the dating life, though. I’m going on a date with Bernadette, and that’s new. I’m like, really? That’s so lame.
Somewhere you said that you wanted to be a superhero or play a superhero. Is that correct?
I feel like that interview was so taken out of context. I said I would be so down to play a superhero role if it got me to being taken seriously by the directors and filmmakers to get the kind of roles I really would love to do.
When someone comes from a place of privilege interviewing someone who isn’t, their perspective of what is being said is typically skewed or misunderstood. Even as someone who’s on a successful show, people come in with their own agendas.
Yeah. I can’t even change my own Wikipedia page! Half the information on there is false. Some crazy fan keeps changing it every time. I literally tried to get my team to change it. Wikipedia blocked me from changing my own information. I just don’t bother with it anymore. Nothing is correct you see on the Internet.
Can I ask you about one of the rumors that I read on the internet?
You can ask me. We will correct it all right now, since Wikipedia banned me!
I heard that the reason you got into acting was that you googled big industries in Vancouver and that filmmaking came up on top.
Actually, that is true! I hate to say it to all the Juilliard students, but I googled how to become an actor.
I hope it motivates people to understand you can achieve anything you want in life. Life is limitless. It’s about grit. The most successful people in the world, the one thing they have is not just luck, but they have the ability to withstand pain. That’s why I’m here where I am today.
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PHOTOS TIRA HOWARD PHOTOGRAPHY;
STYLING W DEPARTMENT;
MAKEUP AMBRA BACA; HAIR GINA MONTOYA
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