The highly anticipated second season of AMC's Western thriller Dark Winds premieres this month, and it's bringing back an entire host of Native powerhouses to the screen.
The dark buddy cop series follows two members of the tribal police force in the 1970s serving a remote Navajo Nation outpost in Arizona. Based on the hit Leaphorn & Chee novels by Tony Hillerman, Lt. Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) and undercover FBI agent Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) must investigate gruesome crimes in their community that alter their own spiritual and moral beliefs.
But the duo has a lot of ground to cover and must also rely on Leaphorn's efficient and intelligent co-worker, Sgt. Bernadette Manuelito, played by Jessica Matten. As the only female police officer on the reservation, Manuelito is a workhorse who constantly tries to prove she shouldn't be underestimated. Armed with her signature slicked-back bun, her tough-but-endearing, no-frills attitude becomes crucial to solving the murder of a Navajo teenager in the first season.
Manuelito's character also embodies some of the harsh realities of living as a Native woman — unwanted advances from white men and cycles of domestic abuse. But her hard shell is slowly scraped away over the season's six episodes, revealing a strong, determined and fearless woman.
"I love how strong she is because if you think of all those dynamics attached to her and what society expects and sees of her, Bernadette does not care whatsoever except for having her two feet planted on this earth, speaking and living her truth," Matten told Native Max Magazine.
Dark Winds captivated more than 2 million viewers when it premiered last summer, quickly securing a second season renewal. The show stands out because of its nearly all-Native cast and crew who portray what it can look like being Native in America. The six-episode second season will be released July 30, with another crime for the Native law enforcement agents to delve into. But who is Jessica Matten, the girl behind Manuelito's tough exterior?
Here's everything we know about the actress, model and businesswoman:
The Building Blocks
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Elle
The Red River Metis Cree actress had a chaotic life, but it was full of love and altruism, and helped lay the foundation for the woman she'd become. The Canadian lived in 26 homes by the time she was 21. She moved to numerous Indigenous reserves throughout the United States and Canada, and even lived overseas in Hong Kong and Korea. But looking back now, Matten believes these were the building blocks for her current hectic career.
"I didn't realize, my entire life, I've kind of already been in the business," she told Elle. "Because, as an actor, it's kind of like the circus, right? We live out of our suitcases for the next job, whatever country or city you have to shoot in. So it was kind of weird how that's been my life."
Though she has that foresight now, Matten says she never considered acting as a career until she was an adult. But she can see the foundation her mother put down when she and her brother were growing up.
"I never thought I was going to be an actor, but my mother, you know, she was a mother on welfare and she wanted to educate her children through cinema," Matten told Elle. "So, we weren't allowed to watch cartoons. None of that."
Instead, the Matten siblings watched scores of classic films and buried themselves in vintage television shows such as Roots. Matten's mother wanted to ensure her children were proud to be Native. So she told them Native stories, drummed with them and helped them make dream catchers.
Matten's mother also instilled in her a passion for helping others. She started one of the first Native modeling agencies in the 1980s, which Matten quickly realized also acted as a safety net for women who were fleeing abusive situations or needed to start over. In addition, her mother started a health and wellness center for Native people, which Matten would often volunteer at.
All of this was preparing Matten's future — but she didn't know it yet.
The Native actress knew she wanted to make a difference in her community, but she thought she'd try advertising first. She said she wanted to change perceptions about Indigenous groups, so she studied human ecology at the University of Alberta and moved to London. But when the Great Recession hit in the latter 2000s, Matten moved back to Canada and started dreaming about the entertainment business.
Her natural charisma and passion must've jumped off the screen, because Matten quickly grabbed a number of roles in short films and miniseries. Her first serious role came when she joined the cast of the Canadian drama Blackstone as Gina Blackstone for a season. But the next year, she earned her real breakout performance. Matten secured the role of Sokanon in the Netflix/Discovery critically acclaimed series Frontier alongside Jason Momoa. And finally, her career seemed to rocket from there.
After that, Matten lent her serious mannerisms and intense gaze to the role of Gerrilyn Spence in the Canadian legal drama Burden of Truth and grabbed a recurring part in the police drama Hudson & Rex. Since the turn of the decade, the actress also played Sam Woodburn in the Native crime drama Tribal, which she also helped produce. She even tried her hand in feature films, as Fiona in the 2020 thriller The Empty Man.
Full Circle
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Only a few years into her acting career, Matten has tried to grab and nurture every opportunity that's been thrown her way — and even the ones she had to search for. And in everything she does, Matten says she wants to uplift Indigenous people and break cycles of intergenerational trauma.
"I worked hard to be confident and find pride in [my Native identity] when you have a society and the odds against you in many ways," Matten told Native Max Magazine in 2022. "It's just nice to see the change and be a part of whatever's happening right now."
Alongside acting in one of the most popular crime dramas right now, Matten also started a production company, 7 Forward Entertainment. Currently, she's working to develop a series about an Afro-Indigenous rapper as well as a feature film about Mi'kmaq long-distance runner Patti Dillon. Inspired by her work with Native communities for the first 25 years of her life, she dedicated the rest of her life to that cause. By leading workshops and supporting wellness centers, Matten aims to help youth with suicide prevention and addiction counseling.
The actress also helped open the Indigenous Film Academy on the Siksika Nation — where she spent part of her childhood — in the summer of 2021. The next year, the academy graduated 20 students who were paid to attend the school, and many of them secured jobs in the entertainment industry.
"Running the school has been my life purpose and my life dream," Matten told Native Max Magazine. "Having students come up and say that without this program, they would've already taken their lives. I keep them afloat every week, as best as I can, to give them coping mechanisms and tools for the present so that they could move forward in their lives."
She channels her passion for Native representation and uplifting Native communities into her role in Dark Winds. Matten is a dedicated actress and even does most of her own stunts and combat fighting on-set.
"I knew that I had a chance here to work super hard and let them see a version of themselves on TV and cinema that they could be proud of, that they could see in themselves," she told Native Max Magazine. "If you can inspire one person to see themselves through a character I played, that's pretty much worth everything."
Matten has worked with many of the cast and crew of Dark Winds on previous Native-related projects before, including McClarnon and Gordon. And that can relieve the pressure to provide the best representation of Native peoples.
"Indian Country's so small in some ways still to this day, so it just feels like a whole reunion. It's a joy," Matten said.
She also sees the nearly-all Native cast and crew of Dark Winds as a sign that Hollywood is changing for the better.
"It's just a joy to be part of this immense change that I feel is happening, not just in Hollywood, but awareness that's being created worldwide," Matten told Native Max Magazine. "It's wonderful for this generation and the youth as well, but also for our elders."
But even after all she's accomplished, Matten has her sights set on an even bigger role: become the first Native superhero.
"I always wanted to see a badass superhero Native woman because let's be real, the majority of Native women that I've grown up with are really tough, hilarious, kind and resilient," Matten told Native Max Magazine. "These are qualities that I wanted to portray on screen."
And even if she catches flak for being so open about her aspirations — no matter how high they may be — she says she won't be silenced.
"I also feel, as a woman, we don't got time to be the nice, placating ... Be quiet about it," Matten told Elle. "You need to be okay with saying what you want. And I want to lead a superhero film because the ripple effect is — it impacts my community deeply. And it also gives me the platform to get the right partners to partner with me and help me get the resources that our people really, really need."
Watch the second season of Dark Winds on July 30.
