‘Reservation Dogs’: How Kaniehtiio Horn Drew on Her Own History for Deer Lady’s Origin Episode

Reservation Dogs may be a comedy, but the FX original from Sterlin Harjo never shied away from drama or tragedy throughout its remarkable three-season run. In the Season 3 installment, “Deer Lady,” the show serves to shine a light on the horrifying reality of Native American boarding schools with the origin story of the titular character, played by Kaniehtiio Horn.

Introduced in Season 1, Deer Lady (Horn) is plucked from Native American mythology and adapted for the show as a spiritual being that operates to keep men and occasionally badly behaving women in line. While she makes brief appearances in early episodes, Season 3 paved the way for a much more in-depth story.

When it came to adapting the Deer Lady for Reservation Dogs, Horn recalls when she auditioned for the role, noting that she recognized the figure from her own community’s stories in Canada. “So, there were parallels of the same mythological being,” Horn says. “When I started talking to Sterlin when I actually got the role, I realized he molded it to work for the show.” Instead of keeping men in line, Horn says Harjo’s vision for Deer Lady was to put “more of an emphasis on a protector of women and children. And she takes care of bad men and bad women sometimes too.”

Shane Brown/FX

Horn calls the screen version of Deer Lady a “collaboration,” as she reveals that neither her nor Harjo knew what Deer Lady’s origin story would look like until Season 3 came around. For those who did not tune into the riveting installment, viewers discover over the half hour that she was among the Indigenous children taken from their homes and forced into boarding schools where they were required to assimilate to Western traditions and language.

The episode sees children abused at the hands of hateful nuns and school workers, among which is Deer Lady’s friend Koda (Michael Podemski-Bedard) who doesn’t survive the “human wolves” in charge. This is also the point in time where she transforms from a human into the spiritual being viewers know onscreen. In the present, Deer Lady seeks revenge for her friend, hunting down the human wolf who is responsible. During her journey, she crosses paths with Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) who finds himself on the road to home to Okern.

The half-hour plays out like a horror, bringing to light the terrifying reality of what life in these boarding schools was like for Indigenous kids, while not exploiting their pain. That doesn’t make it any easier to watch though as Horn recalls mentioning to Harjo that the episode would need some kind of trigger warning at the beginning of it. “Your imagination goes to all of the places of what’s happening when [characters are behind closed doors]. And that’s almost worse than seeing it displayed on screen,” Horn says.

(Credit: Shane Brown/FX)

The performer recognizes that despite not attending a school like this herself, the Indigenous communities affected by them are so small, that it’s hard not to know someone with a direct connection to the schools. “It’s truly heartbreaking,” Horn notes, revealing that she had her own personal experiences with trauma to draw on for the episode.

“As a very empathetic and emotional human being, I was [glad to] not have to be a part of those scenes in the school. But I used a lot of the things that I have personally gone through to fuel the sadness and the rage that Deer Lady embodies in the scenes when she’s having the discussions with Bear,” Horn shares, adding that they also influenced her scene confronting the aged human wolf, which she ultimately kills.

“There are things that I was able to draw on to make sure that there was those layers there,” Horn says, noting that she remembered calling her sister, Waneek Horn-Miller, “telling her the things that we experienced together” influenced her approach. Horn-Miller was bayonetted near the heart at 14 while holding a young Horn in her arms during an altercation between a soldier and Mohawk amid the Oka Crisis in the ’90s.

“I thought about the man who bayonetted her in the chest when I was stabbing this guy,” Horn admits of Deer Lady’s killing scene toward the end of the episode. “It was sort of therapeutic.”

(Credit: Shane Brown/FX)

In an even bigger full-circle moment, Horn recalls, “I was an extra when I was a kid and I played a residential school kid, and I almost feel like that’s some weird f**ked up rite of passage as kids in the arts. In Canada, we had the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the conversation [about healing] has been happening for a lot longer than in the United States.” For Horn growing up, there were “a lot of films and documentaries about the residential school system up in Canada.”

But there’s been arguably less representation in the United States. “I’m proud of the kids who portrayed little Deer Lady and Koda,” Horn says of her younger counterparts in the episode. “And they had a lot of support, thankfully. I think it was more the adults,” she notes,”From what I’ve heard, they were more emotionally torn up when they were shooting all of that stuff.”

Until this episode, Deer Lady mostly delivered justice offscreen or it was merely implied, but in this episode, we see her exact revenge. At first, she’s hesitant when walking into the human wolf’s home, but she eventually does what she’s gone there to do, stabbing him to death. “The important thing about portraying this character for me was making her relatable and somebody that is as layered as we all are. And it was what happened to her as a little girl,” Horn says that helped bring those layers.

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How 'Reservation Dogs' Delivered Deer Lady's Dark Origin Story

“There are times when I feel like that little girl, vulnerable and scared, but you have to pull up your socks and get on with your day sometimes. This has been [Deer Lady’s] goal, but suddenly she finds herself in the wolf’s den and it’s still terrifying because there are still parts of her that are still human,” Horn acknowledges.

While she says, “It’s cool to watch a person just be a badass slayer with no empathy, I personally prefer to watch somebody with depth that everybody could cheer for, even though she’s doing something f**ked up, you still find yourself cheering for her.”

Although she may have only appeared in three episodes of the series overall, Deer Lady certainly made an impact, so much so that fans have pushed for a spinoff, something that Horn is more than happy to explore. “I’d love to do a f**king spinoff, if not a spinoff, at least a movie or two movies. I don’t know. I feel like I’m not done playing her. There’s this crazy connection that I feel [to her].”

For Horn, who has played various supernatural characters ranging from vampires to ghosts, she says, “It was the first supernatural being that I got to play that was specifically Indigenous. She’s a very empowering being and I am really grateful. I hope that the spirit of Deer Lady is proud of how I’m portraying her.” Here’s to hoping Deer Lady might return, and if not, we know her impact will carry on.

FX’s Reservation Dogs, Streaming now, Hulu