Dallas Goldtooth, “Reservation dogs” actor, comedian & environmentalist, is of Mdewakanton Dakota & Dene heritage. He talks to Natasha Leggero & Moshe Kasher, married comedians. We pick up where Dallas is describing his recent frontline activism…

DALLAS: I was organizing against the Keystone XL pipeline, that was going to be transporting oil from the tar sands of Alberta down to the Gulf of Mexico. We fought that for almost a decade. We beat it, we fucking won. A massive oil pipeline killed by frontline people: native peoples, white ranchers & farmers across Nebraska & South Dakota. This white rancher shows up wearing his American Cap, he's a proud right wing voter, but he was against this project, too, because it was impacting his property rights.

MOSHE: That's really powerful. Because people become walled off behind ideology to such a degree that if you don't vote like them, or look like them, they’ll say “that's my enemy”.

DALLAS: I'm Native American, I'm Dakota, and I grew up there surrounded by white folks. A lot of times, there's poor white farmers, or just middle class white kids around me. When you're in the rural Midwest, you get the right wing, you get the left wing, you get the whole thing.

MOSHE: How do you get rid of that feeling of “I can't change anything, so I might as well do nothing?”

DALLAS: I don't have a clear answer for that. But I feel like we're getting better with social media. I think back to 2020, a key moment for us, you have social justice movements for Black Lives happening. People started asking, “How is my city engaged in anti-blackness? How do we confront it?” So I think it starts a little question around the realm of influence that you have.

NATASHA: How do you spend so much of your life energy fighting, though? Do you struggle with that? Like God, sometimes I just want to give up and just indulge myself and stop fighting.

DALLAS: I’ve never lost track of what we're fighting for, for a living economy, for sustainable development within our communities, for self determination. We’re fighting so that communities get to decide for themselves what happens to the air, water, and their bodies. I know we can't just wake up tomorrow and be fossil-free, because our infrastructure is not set up that way. But we have to transition towards a better future.

NATASHA: So is being an activist on some level is being an optimist?

DALLAS: Oh, yeah, I'm totally optimistic. I used to piss off people because of it. They were like, “Aren't you supposed to be mad?” But a lot of my activism for the past two years has been focused on divestment. How do we divest from fossil fuels? How do we hold the people who are giving money to the corporations, who are killing this planet, accountable? And I am a strong advocate that we need more organizers. An activist is somebody who you can depend on to show up when something's going down. An organizer is somebody that builds collective power to stop these decisions from happening. We need more leaders !

MOSHE: You mentioned an inability to imagine a future in which we're not dependent on fossil fuels. So how do you imagine a livable and sustainable future given how awful things are right now?

DALLAS: I'm a firm believer in a story-based strategy. Our entire existence is based on stories, right? In order to build a better future, we have to dream of it. And that means unlocking your creative side, whether it's drawing, making podcasts, telling stories, seeing a world where rather than driving motorcycles, we're riding bikes, cruising through awesome futuristic cities. That's where I want to encourage all of us to dream. To take the fucking chance here and really bring our dreams into our lives…

“Dare To Dream” @endlesshoneymoonpod

@Natashaleggero @Moshekasher @DallasgoldtootH