Jessica Matten

With her abiding sense of love and reverence for her heritage, Jessica Matten gained a wealth of life experience to draw on as an actor before she ever hit the screen. Born in Alberta, Canada in 1986, Matten's Métis and Saulteaux-Cree heritage played an important role in her life from the beginning. She began modeling at the age of six through her mother's agency, which specialized in hiring and promoting native people. Even after studying human ecology at the University of Alberta and traveling to the UK to intern at Elle UK, Matten remained devoted to the betterment of native peoples, joining with her family to run the fitness company Lemon Cree, which focused on helping Aboriginal people achieve their fitness and health goals, in addition to regularly writing for Active Cree magazine and performing a speaking tour with her mother titled "Indigenous Women Breaking Barriers: A Mother and Daughter Story." Meanwhile, Matten also had dreams of pursuing a career as an actor, making her film debut in the 2010 comedy "Eddie's Stereotype" (2010). She would make major waves as the star of Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers' award winning short film "A Red Girl's Reasoning" (2012), and gained even more notoriety for playing the recurring role of Gia on the series "Blackstone" (APTN, 2011-). Already fast becoming a star on her home turf in Canada, Matten's fanbase opened up even wider when she joined Jason Mamoa on the acclaimed series "Frontier" (Discovery Channel Canada, 2016-), which was quickly picked up for distribution to the U.S. by Netflix.