When I saw “Dances With Wolves,” I was living in New York City, and maybe a month or two after seeing it, I was walking back to the East Village with my girlfriend and said, “I think I’m going to become an actor.” She just looked at me and said: “That’s fantastic.” And she didn’t even blink. When I saw those faces - faces that looked like mine on the screen - it changed how I looked at my career. And there was this strange disconnect with that knowledge and what I saw on-screen… And then around the time I was actually transitioning from dance into film was the era of “Dances With Wolves” and “Last of the Mohicans.” I was actually starting to see depictions that weren’t caricatures and were nuanced. But I grew up in my community - I grew up with my family around me - so I knew who we were. I saw ridiculous representations of what people thought we were. Growing up, did you see yourself reflected on-screen? So all these notes that were in the script told me right away that I was looking at a landmark portrayal. He understood people, he understood the cost of war and he had witnessed destruction and illness. I’ve always looked at humor as a sign of awareness and intelligence. And that, I think, is the most rare thing that I see in scripts not written by us about our communities and about our heroes. How did the story veer away from those cliches?Īlmost immediately, I recognized his humor - how funny he was on the page. You said you responded to the script because Sitting Bull was not depicted as a stereotypical noble savage. Greyeyes spoke with The Times from his home in Toronto, where he lives with his wife and two children, and serves as a theater professor at York University.
The film, available on demand via DirecTV ahead of a Friday theatrical release from A24, is based on a true story about the friendship between the Hunkpapa Lakota leader and Catherine Weldon (Jessica Chastain), a widowed painter who traveled to North Dakota on a quest to paint Sitting Bull in the 1880s. For his latest role, in “Woman Walks Ahead,” the 51-year-old year old plays arguably the most recognizable figure in Native history: Chief Sitting Bull. When he transitioned from dance to acting, he was always cast in Native roles, allowing him to learn about iconic characters like Crazy Horse and Wandering Spirit. Still, his ancestry remained vital to him. Though he was raised in the city, he and his family would travel from Saskatoon to the Plains Cree reserve nearly every weekend for powwows or tribal gatherings.īut at age 9, Greyeyes was accepted into Canada’s National Ballet School, so his entire family migrated east to Toronto.
LAST OF THE MOHICANS SCREENIT FULL
A full schedule of the event will be available online prior to the festival as well as on the festival grounds day of.Growing up in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, Michael Greyeyes always felt close to his indigenous roots. Tickets include access to the festival in downtown Morganton where there will be musical entertainment, heritage craft vendors, food trucks and reenactors. May 14th festival tickets are on sale for $13 for general admission (kids 5 and under are free!).
For more information or tickets for the tours visit Guided tours to film locations at Chimney Rock Park and Lake James are being planned. The event will feature two days (May 12-13) of guided film location tours and an all-day event on Saturday, May 14, on the Courthouse Plaza in downtown Morganton. The Last of the Mohicans Festival is hosted by the Burke County Tourism Development Authority (TDA), and Sponsored by Lake James Real Estate. This one-of-a-kind event will celebrate the incredible impact the making of this motion picture had on the citizens of Burke County and surrounding areas.
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