We were warned 11 minutes into the first episode of “Reservation Dogs.”
Tribal officer Big (Zahn McClarnon) said this:
“I am most concerned about the other thing that I have been noticing. Supernatural stuff. You know Old Man Fixico down at the end of the village? He claims he saw the Deer Lady walking around. Deer Lady ain’t been seen in these parts in a long time.”
Jimmie Tramel, Grace Wood and James Watts talk Alley Cat Ranch. Dubbed the “largest multipurpose adult playground in the state,” it will have pickleball courts, Ferris wheel, and great barbecue.
There will be a Deer Lady sighting in Oklahoma this weekend.
Kaniehtiio Horn, who plays Deer Lady in the shot-in-Oklahoma series, will be among guests at Indigenous POPX, scheduled Friday, March 10 through Sunday, March 12 at First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City. The event was formerly known as Indigenous Comic Con. For tickets and information, go to indigipopx.com.
Horn debuted as Deer Lady in the fifth episode of the award-winning and groundbreaking series, which features an all-Indigenous cast/creative team and captures modern Native life in rural Oklahoma in a way never accomplished previously.
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Deer Lady returned in season two last year and — good news for Deer Lady fans — Horn said the character is coming back in season three.
“She is one of my favorite characters ever,” Horn said in a pre-con phone interview. “I absolutely love the role, and I love how much people love the role. She is emotionally layered. She’s funny and sexy. She’s just a lot of fun to play.”
If you haven’t seen “Reservation Dogs” and you’re not quite sure what a Deer Lady is, you should correct that ASAP by streaming the series (available on FX on Hulu).
Until then, be aware that Horn’s Deer Lady was inspired by a character from Native lore.
In a 2021 interview, Tulsa-based filmmaker Sterlin Harjo indicated he and “Reservation Dogs” co-creator Taika Waititi brought Deer Lady into the show because of supernatural stories they heard while growing up, albeit in different places — Harjo in Oklahoma and Waititi in New Zealand.
“I mean, every Native community hears stories about the Deer Lady — most of them, anyway,” Harjo said. “And it’s usually that a woman was hitchhiking and like an uncle or somebody picked them up and looked down and they had deer hooves. You always knew that if you weren’t good, the Deer Lady would take you out.”
That was the situation in the Showtime anthology series “Masters of Horror.” A 2005 episode directed by John Landis was titled “Deer Woman.” Bad boys who encountered her met a grisly end.
Horn was raised in Canada, where she heard Hoof Lady stories instead of Deer Lady stories.
“It’s the basically the same kind of thing,” she said. “She deters men from going out and cheating on their wives, basically. … It’s just sort of like an entity that you believe exists and is out there. You better act right.”
In the 2021 interview, Harjo said Horn is a buddy from years ago and a great actor, so it was easy to cast her as Deer Lady. She auditioned and got a call-back in landing the part.
“I think I wanted to bring depth,” Horn said. “I wanted to make sure that she’s not just — every bad guy or quote-unquote bad guy or scary person, there’s a reason why they are that, so I wanted to make sure you could see that in the character.”
In Deer Lady’s debut episode (“Come and Get Your Love”), viewers learn Big was scared straight by Deer Lady when he was a child, and that’s how he wound up wearing a badge.
Best thing to happen to Horn as a result of being Deer Lady?
“I’m not sure about one single great thing that happened to me,” she said. “I feel like people really love my portrayal of this supernatural being that is revered and respected and feared. You know what I mean? I feel like I’m now cemented in peoples’ minds as this person, as this being, especially in Indian country. I think that’s a really wonderful thing. I’ll forever be known as this character, as this being, and I’m OK with that because she’s a badass and I love her.”
Horn, who has a history of playing supernatural-based characters, said she will be making her third or fourth appearance at a comic con. She said it has been an “absolute pleasure” at cons to see how much you — and the characters you play — mean to people.
“It’s really nice to see that, and especially with this being an Indigenous one,” she said. “There is something extra special about that. My boyfriend is coming along, and my son is coming along, and my boyfriend will be selling. He carves war clubs, so he is going to have a booth there selling those. It has kind of become a family affair.”
Horn loves “Reservation Dogs” because she is friends with many of the show’s creatives, and those friends are getting to flex their skills while using Rez Dogs as a launch pad to perhaps write, direct or produce other projects.
Horn said it was at a past Indigenous Comic Con appearance where she met all the members of the 1491s, an Native comedy troupe, for the first time. The members of the 1491s are now on the “Reservation Dogs” team.
“I had met them as individuals here and there, but that was the first time we all hung out together and we did a couple of panels together,” she said. “Before that, I had reached out and had an online kind of friendship with them since like 2012 or something.”
Because the con was where they were all in the same place at the same time, she said it has a special place in her heart.
“I’m really excited to be there, and I’m excited to be able to bring my family,” she said. “It feels like a very Indigenous way of doing things. Bring the whole gang, right?”