Reservation Dogs ' Devery Jacobs: 'It's About Damn Time' Indigenous People Were Represented on TV

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Devery Jacobs is playing "a badass woman" — and says it's about time she and other badass Indigenous women get their time in the spotlight.

On a recent episode of the PEOPLE Every Day podcast hosted by Janine Rubenstein, Devery Jacobs speaks about her role in the show Reservation Dogs and living life as an Indigenous person.

Jacobs plays Elora Danan on the FX comedy Reservation Dogs (available for streaming on Hulu), which follows a group of Indigenous teens in Oklahoma who want to make their way to California — and decide they'll do anything to get the money, even if they have to steal it.

Listen to more from Jacobs' interview on the PEOPLE Every Day podcast, below:

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"I would say she was the moral center of the group, whether they like it or not," Jacobs told PEOPLE of her character. "She's the one who organizes the crimes. Who's the one who's getting the money together to leave for California. I've had the privilege of playing a lot of ba-ass women and young women in, in the career that I've had, and Elora Danan is no exception. But what I especially love about her is that she is, she has so much heart."

Jacobs is also grateful that Reservation Dogs, which was created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi, gives an often-marginalized group its time to shine.

"It's about damn time that Indigenous people are represented on this scale," Jacobs says. "Rarely have we been afforded the opportunity to tell our own stories. It's so perfect that it's a comedy because our communities are actually so funny. And nobody in Western culture really thinks that Indigenous people are anything [except] this idea of the stoic Indian who was being shot in old Western films. Or they'll think of stereotypes like Pocahontas. We haven't had many opportunities to be three-dimensional."

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The authenticity comes directly from the show creators; Harjo grew up in the area and brings much of his own experience to the script.

"We're all collectively helping Sterlin tell his childhood story of the experience of growing up in rural Oklahoma, of being Muskogee, Creek, and Seminole, of being descendants from the Trail of Tears," Jacobs said. "That experience is something that we all got on board in telling. In preparing for the role, Sterlin had all invited us to learn about the Trail of Tears and to learn about Muskogee history, to learn about Seminole culture."

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Jacobs also draws on her own childhood to help inform her portrayal of Elena.

"I grew up in Kahnawake Mohawk territory, which is a Mohawk reservation just outside of Montreal," she said. "And some of my favorite memories were growing up on the dead end dirt road that I lived on and biking around the community and hanging out with my cousins. It would also be participating in the Turtle Island Theater Company, where I originally started acting!"

"I have a bit of the best of both worlds," she says, "but it was very much the foundation of being raised in my community with my language and my culture and my family that, that I feel really rooted me in who I am."

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