DEAD PIONEERS: on Origins, Politics And Activism and Intertwining Arts

In the damp cellar of Camden’s Underworld venue, we spoke to the multi-media artist, poet and activist Gregg Deal, now also delivering his sharp, poignant and witty lyrics as the founder and frontman of political punk band, DEAD PIONEERS. 

The band's first stirrings began when Deal suggested to friends he wanted to try out a musical element to accompany his eye-opening and soul searching performance piece, ‘The Punk Pan-Indian Romantic Comedy’. With the “idea of using punk riffs and spoken word”, they set up a “shitty drum set and mics” and amazingly, in less than two hours, they had put together “the first iteration of Bad Indian”. Within weeks of its independent release, it became a viral sensation, quickly gaining over half a million streams. 

Where Bad Indian’s sound is raw and immediate, the latest release, PO$T AMERICAN, is a more intentionally explosive record. Deal emphatically adding that their upcoming third album, “will be even more so!”. As an artist, Deal embraces DEAD PIONEERS as another medium with which to experiment, saying, “It's not uncommon for visual artists to have a band…It's all art, it all kind of funnels into the same place.” Claiming consistency is key, “the voice you hear on stage with DEAD PIONEERS, is the same person you heard at a protest in 2013, is the same voice that you'll hear in my visual artwork.”

The band are unflinchingly direct about their politics and Deal’s creative outlets are all ingrained with his activism, particularly with regards to the rights of the “traditional inhabitants”, of what is now known as the ‘United States of America’, himself from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. He explains: “We are not a racial group, but instead a political one that's been codified in the so-called founding documents of our nation. That means that anything I say or anything I do is just inherently political. Whether I know that, whether I own that, whether I wield that really ends up being the only question.  The political edge is just gonna inherently be there no matter what. I can't not be political.” 

The subject immediately lights a fire in the conversation. How this historic discrimination and ignorance manifests still today in current US administration, Deal explains in more detail, “...somebody who is class poor and needs food assistance, those resources should be there. Now Trump has eliminated all of those things and has pulled them back to almost nothing, if they're not gone altogether. But indigenous people in the United States have a federal trust obligation or relationship to the federal government and are not receiving social services. Instead they are receiving services based, on dues owed, for land purchased or stolen. These resources are supposed to be there under a federal trust obligation that was designated by the Supreme Court or by federal treaties that are protected under Article six, Section two of the Constitution of the United States. Those are not social programs, those are completely different.” 

A reminder of how conveniently short American and European memories are, as they venerate the rights of certain groups to live on historic lands, whilst evicting others with lethal force. The lyrics to their track, Tired, reiterates this brutal reality, ‘The foundation of this country is rooted in slavery and genocide born in the bosom of colonialism / America places the original inhabitants as foreigners in their own lands / Don’t be scared of learning the whole historical story, it's not going to hurt you.’

After reading the autobiography of MALCOLM X in high school, Deal recalls how his world view changed. Talking about his work several decades on, “it is all pretty much cultural, or social, or political, or all three, because that's just where my heart's always been.” Songs like Working Class Warfare, explicitly speak about an anti-capitalist struggle. Delving further, Deal explains, “...there's different versions of capitalism and the United States is in the worst version right now.” 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgMqN5Cv3mw

Asking what he thought of struggles like, indigenous rights and anti-racism, without an anti-capitalist angle, he responded that, “there's a line in one of my songs that capitalism can only exist if there's a poor class” adding thoughtfully, “...capitalism has to be upheld by the tenants of racism and white supremacy, because it is rooted in the concept of rich white land owners, who are settling a space and oppressing anything and everyone in that space.”

Part of Deal’s talent and the originality of DEAD PIONEERS, is platforming a counter narrative to Eurocentric perspectives of the genocidal history of ‘America’. When asked about his opinions on the efficacy of certain politicised words, he points out that, “indigenous is a blanket statement. The Mohawk people from northeast New York and my people who are from Nevada, are not the same people. We don't speak the same language, we don't look the same, we don't have the same traditions.” Shockingly, “40% of Americans believe that native people are extinct”. An outrageous belief in 2026, until we consider our own whitewashed historical textbooks and penchant for Hollywood Westerns. Quickly you start to see how such a perverse ignorance has flourished.

“We've moved from being an Indian to an indigenous person or even a Native American. These are fine for general terms, but they are all incorrect technically, because they are lumping an entire continent of people together as one race. And that's just simply not the case.” 

Whether this re-education of the masses should be his cross to bear, is another matter. He emphatically states, “I don't speak for native people, I just don't, I speak for myself recognising that there's a shared experience there.” This includes a rich history of resistance, both shared and individual, from AIM (American Indian Movement), to individuals like LEONARD PELTIER, and more recently the Dakota Access Pipe Line (DAPL) protests.

With a seemingly natural flow that turns his poetry into lyrics, he explains more about his process, “I'm just trying to find a beat and a cadence, and then rewriting so it fits.” Describing a six degrees of separation roadmap, in all he does, Deal quotes, “even the artwork on the records are connected.” Designed by Cheyenne Randall, a Lakota artist that Deal was in an art crew with, the album cover for Bad Indian is a surreal contrast of ultra-cuteness in the form of his seventh grade portrait, covered in elaborate face tattoos. “It's just so absurd. And I just kind of wanted that.” 

Using his paintings and elements from older work on subsequent albums, he notes sagely, “I'm just allowing everything in my career to be available for that space. We can go backwards. We can create something new, so we can then go forward. And you know, for native people we would tell you that the past and the present, and the future, all exist in the same space. So there is nothing old and nothing new. It's just stuff that just is.”

Words: Alana Madden

Photos and Artwork: Dead Pioneers and Cheyenne Randall

With thanks to: Division PR and Dead Pioneers