Indigenous actor, activist Dallas Goldtooth headlines ‘Native November’ events

Writer, actor and organizer Dallas Goldtooth addressed students and community members Thursday evening as the keynote speaker for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s “Native November.”

Goldtooth, of Dakota and Diné heritage, is best known for his role in the acclaimed FX series “Reservation Dogs” and as a co-creator of Native American sketch comedy group The 1491s. He came onstage at Gordon Dining & Event Center following a drum performance by Twin Tails Singers, a student-led powwow drum group. 

The event boasted the highest attendance of all of the 2023 Native November events, and is believed to have the highest attendance of all time for any Native November event, according to the Indigenous Student Center.

This year’s Native November theme was “laughter as medicine,” and the night never ran short of laughs as Goldtooth told joke after clever joke to a large audience of students and community members. 

In “Reservation Dogs,” Goldtooth plays the spirit of William Knifeman, a bare-chested warrior on horseback who died in the Battle of Little Bighorn, an 1875 conflict that killed Gen. George Custer and all 200 of his men. 

Goldtooth joked about the costuming in that role — or rather lack thereof — as he asked all of the white audience members if they were fans of the show. 

“Your ancestors took my land,” he said. “Now you get to see my nipples.”

He admitted shortly after, however, that the trade was a bit more beneficial to one party. 

When the show was first greenlit, Goldtooth recalled that fellow 1491s member Sterlin Harjo, the executive producer, director and co-writer of “Reservation Dogs,” made it non-negotiable the show would have an all-Native cast, writers room and directing group. Harjo also demanded it be filmed in Oklahoma, a state in which 43% of the land is considered “Indian Country.” 

“This is a story of community,” Goldtooth said. “It has to be grounded in community.”

Representation as a concept was a strong theme of the night, with Goldtooth reminiscing on his childhood and how Native communities and traditions were often grouped together in media under the vague umbrella of “Indians.”

“As a young Dakota man, there wasn’t a lot of representations of my life on TV,” he said. “It may have been a representation of our past, but we rarely saw ourselves on TV, or our communities. We are taking power and telling our own stories.”

In this, Goldtooth said recognizing the variety of different experiences across tribes is important to any portrayals, but he also said they experience the same oppression. 

“There's so much diversity but also so much commonality in our struggles,” he said.

Goldtooth told the audience one of the most full-circle moments of his career came when he was able to work with Gary Farmer and Wes Studie — a pair he called legends of the trade — on an episode of “Reservation Dogs.” If you can think of a Native American character in an older movie, he said, it was probably played by one of them. 

Even then, those Native stories were almost always being told by non-Natives. 

Goldtooth said he sees the work being done in “Reservation Dogs” — that is, the telling of Native stories by Native storytellers — as a way of confronting power. Reflecting on his past as a community organizer in climate activism, he emphasized the power of an impactful story.

“We would not be seen as a danger to dominant society if our stories did not hold power,” he said, adding that “the purpose of an organizer, but also an artist, is to unveil a story that's irresistible.”

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