Representing generations
Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota actor Isabella Star LaBlanc carries her community with her as she navigates the pressures of the film industry.
Isabella Star LaBlanc, junior fancy shawl dancer, took a deep breath as everyone rose to their feet for the powwow’s grand entry. Her heart pounded. Each powwow dance category — fancy shawl, jingle, traditional — shared a different meaning. As an elementary school student, she already felt the weight of the stories she got to tell. Of the people she got to represent.
Isabella Star LaBlanc, a 26-year-old Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota actor, surveyed the set of HBO’s “True Detective: Night Country” with the same set of eyes. She was in Iceland, acting alongside five-time Academy Award-winner Jodie Foster in a show that would gain 12.7 million average viewers per episode, according to Forbes.
LaBlanc thought back to how she felt at powwows, with her community surrounding her. The sound of drums, voices and footsteps filled her ears, reminding LaBlanc who she was doing this for.
I’m here to do this scene to the best of my ability. I’m going to do it with good intentions and I’m going to trust that’s enough.
About 3,000 miles away from her home in Minneapolis, LaBlanc entered into an unprecedented world not just for her, but for Indigenous people. It would be easy to let the pressure overwhelm her, but LaBlanc wasn’t doing it alone.
“There’s often times that I’m stepping into rooms, not knowing what it feels like to be there and not really knowing who to ask for advice,” LaBlanc said. “And I find it helpful to ground myself in my community and my culture and my language and what matters to me.”
LaBlanc grew up feeling caught between worlds. The youngest of eight children, the only sibling who lived in the city and one of the only Native students at her private school in St. Paul. But in elementary school, LaBlanc discovered she felt seen and heard onstage. She started doing children’s theatre at Stepping Stone Theatre. At 8, she told stories that mattered to her, including the play “Rainbow Crow” by Navajo playwright Rhiana Yazzie. Soon, her community members in the city and on the Sisseton and Lower Sioux reservations referred to her as “Isabella the Actress.”
“Since I began acting as a kid, it has been a way for me to take up space in a way that feels hard for me otherwise as a Native person who was born and raised in the city,” LaBlanc said.
Christina Baldwin, artistic director at the Jungle Theatre, first saw LaBlanc onstage during rehearsals for “The Wolves” at the Jungle Theatre in 2019. LaBlanc had just graduated from high school at St. Paul Academy, and she worked at Ojibwe author Louise Erdrich’s Birchbark Books while doing local plays. “The Wolves” was her debut on The Jungle stage. As Baldwin watched the rehearsal, she was struck by LaBlanc’s stage presence. The room seemed to expand and fill with energy around her.
Later, Baldwin spotted LaBlanc and her mother eating at Punch Pizza. She came up to them and spoke with LaBlanc for the first time, telling her how impressed she was with her acting.
“It was a type of presence that was beyond her years,” Baldwin said. “She’s rare.”
In “The Wolves,” LaBlanc played a soccer goalie. Her character, #00, experienced intense anxiety before games and didn’t speak much. But during one scene, alone onstage, #00 practiced saves in front of the net. The room was silent. The practice increased in intensity. She screamed. The lights cut to black.
JuCoby Johnson, a New York-based playwright, actor and friend of LaBlanc, watched from the audience.
“It was on another level, just in terms of how she uses her power and her strength even without having to say very much,” Johnson said. “I don’t know how to describe it other than she radiated on stage.”
In “True Detective,” silence often fills the scenes with LaBlanc’s character, Leah Danvers, and her stepmother, Chief Danvers, played by Jodie Foster. Chief Danvers driving with her eyes locked on the road and her mouth in a thin line. Leah Danvers with her arms crossed, slumped in the passenger seat. Leah Danvers wiping off her temporary Inupiat chin tattoo, her stepmother watching in the mirror to make sure none of the ink remains.
As a Dakota person, LaBlanc grew up with the knowledge of seven generations, always aware of the relationship between the three generations behind her and the three in front. She doesn’t view her characters as individuals in time and space. They are part of a larger cultural context and community. While acting, LaBlanc is thinking. How have these people gotten to this moment? Who are they? What’s going to happen after them? It shifts her focus and grounds her in her own culture. But it wasn’t always this easy for LaBlanc to unlearn Western perspectives on acting and lean on the way she grew up.
In high school, while acting in her first indie film, “The Jingle Dress,” LaBlanc met actor Kimberly Norris Guerrero, a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and of Salish-Kootenai descent. Guerrero has acted in 48 film and TV productions, including “Reservation Dogs,” “Spirit Rangers” and “The Wilds.”
“Isabella came up to me with that same fire that I have,” Guerrero said.
Shortly after, LaBlanc and her mom visited Guerrero at her home in Riverside, California. LaBlanc gave Guerrero a beaded necklace and earrings. Guerrero gave LaBlanc advice on how to protect herself in the industry and how to find an agent.
“If you really want to do this, remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s a long game,” Guerrero told LaBlanc.
Guerrero grew up in the 1970s in small-town Oklahoma, getting up early every Saturday to watch the morning cartoons. No one on the television ever looked like her. But after a casting director scouted Guerrero at a basketball game at Pauley Pavillion where she was a cheerleader at UCLA, Guerrero booked her first commercial for TNT. From there, she joined the Screen Actors Guild and built her career.
Guerrero often fought for “small wins” in the film industry. In 1993, when she played Jerry Seinfeld’s girlfriend, Winona, on an episode of “Seinfeld,” she asked the producers if they could switch their drinks from wine to sparkling water, as she was an advocate for the sobriety movement at the time. They agreed.
However, while reading other scripts, Guerrero found major issues concerning sexualizing and perpetuating violence against Native women. As a result, she either gave up the role or fixed the script.
“Sometimes I would rewrite entire scenes,” Guerrero said. “I completely should’ve gotten in the Writers Guild back in the 90s.”
LaBlanc felt the same responsibility early in her career. She would often show up for her first play rehearsal and be the only Native person sitting at the table. In many people’s minds, this transformed her into the de facto cultural consultant. They looked to LaBlanc to have all the right answers, to speak for all Native cultures.
“I would often feel worried that I wasn’t doing enough to take care of the story and that I needed more support in telling Indigenous stories.” — Isabella Star LaBlanc, Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota actor
She tried to balance everyone’s expectations. What do these people think being a Native person is like? What are they looking for in this story? How is it different from what I think about being a Native person?
“The pressure could feel overwhelming,” LaBlanc said. “I would often feel worried that I wasn’t doing enough to take care of the story and that I needed more support in telling Indigenous stories.”
The weight of working a double shift as an actor and cultural consultant built over time. LaBlanc leaned on Guerrero and other Native actors who understood how it felt to be the only representation in the room.
“It is impossible to be a voice for all Native people. It’s a lot of emotional, spiritual and mental labor,” Guerrero said. “And you’re always a little bit afraid that you’re gonna get it wrong.”
Now, LaBlanc makes a concerted effort to participate in projects with Native people involved in front and behind the camera. But that wasn’t the only pressure she faced.
In 2016, 19-year-old LaBlanc submitted an audition tape and was chosen for the CBS Network Drama Diversity Casting Initiative, a program focused on finding actors of color from cities beyond Los Angeles and New York. When she flew to Los Angeles for a screen test, many people questioned why she still lived in the Twin Cities. But LaBlanc keeps going back to her community. She feels like she talks about Minnesota constantly.
“Coming home always feels good because it’s where I make the most sense to myself,” she said. “I care about being an actor that’s grounded in stories from the place that I’m from and the version of storytelling that has been taking place here for generations.”
There’s pressure to move from Minnesota. To focus on film over theatre. To use a typical Western acting method. But LaBlanc is learning to ignore those voices. When she sends in audition tapes, accepts jobs and signs contracts, she’s thinking about the people she comes from. Will this job represent them well? Will I be proud to share it with them? On set and onstage, she’s aware of the seven generations surrounding her.
“I feel like that bolsters me in a way,” LaBlanc said. “It can be kind of vulnerable to be an actor, and I feel braver because I’m doing it with a community behind me. So I am really grateful for the responsibility of it.”
On Jan. 9, 2024, LaBlanc attended the Los Angeles premiere of “True Detective: Night Country,” the fourth season of HBO’s series that started in 2014 with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. It was her first red carpet event, and she didn’t know what to wear or how to act in front of the cameras. But she didn’t have to do it alone. LaBlanc looked to Lily Gladstone, who is Siksikaitsitapii and Nimíipuu, and the other Indigenous actors in the Oscar-nominated film “Killers of the Flower Moon” for how to present herself.
She wore new beadwork for the occasion. In iridescent blue and white beads, her barrettes read “Protect Women” on the left and “Protect Water” on the right. LaBlanc thought it was something that her 17-year-old “True Detective” character, Leah Danvers, would do.
“I love Leah so much. In my mind, she’s like a little sister,” LaBlanc said. “She represents so much of what I see in the younger generation of Native kids right now and how much hope they give me.”
When LaBlanc turns on the TV and sees the young Indigenous actors on “Reservation Dogs,” she’s filled with hope for the future of Native people onscreen.
Guerrero gets the same feeling when she watches “True Detective,” “Echo” and “Rutherford Falls.” The representation numbers still aren’t where they need to be. But they’re better than the Saturday morning cartoons she watched growing up.
“Lily will be that voice. Isabella will be that voice. It’s exciting to see the younger generation lead with Native joy.” — Kimberly Norris Guerrero, actor
On sets, Guerrero still wears the beaded earrings LaBlanc gave her in California years ago. The earrings depict a Native woman, back turned, walking forward. When Guerrero looks at them, she sees the long line of mothers and grandmothers and aunties who have gone before her. And she sees a new generation of Native storytellers lining up behind her.
“Lily will be that voice. Isabella will be that voice. It’s exciting to see the younger generation lead with Native joy,” Guerrero said. “I see clarity, conviction, humor, passion, understanding. It’s like, ah, right. This is who we were before everything happened.”
Guerrero, Baldwin and Johnson want LaBlanc to go far. They want to see her in a comedic role. Directing her own TV show. Onscreen at the Oscars. Johnson hopes that LaBlanc is one day too busy and famous to answer his texts.
As for LaBlanc? She sees everything through “younger Isabella’s eyes.” She had never imagined that she’d act on an HBO show with Jodie Foster. What do you do when you’ve surpassed your wildest dreams? Maybe act in a comedy, or tell a story centered around Dakota people.
But LaBlanc doesn’t care about being remembered for anything in particular. Just a good relative. Whether she’s a tiny tot dancer at a powwow, a goalie on a St. Paul stage or Jodie Foster’s costar in Iceland, she’s doing it with her people three generations behind and in front of her.
Native American Representation in film from 2007–2022
An analysis of the 1,600 top-grossing movies released from 2007–2022 found:
- >0.25% of all speaking characters were Native American
- 1% of films featured female Native American characters with speaking roles
- 77% of Native characters were male and 23% were female
Data from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.
