Oscar-winning Native American actor Wes Studi to receive honor in Philly

It's an especially fitting honor for Studi, who has not only acted in "leathers and feathers" historical films, as he often calls them, but played a vital role in history himself. After attending the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma, he joined the U.S. Army and served in the Vietnam War. Upon his return, he became an activist for Indigenous rights. Studi was part of the grassroots American Indian Movement and participated in numerous demonstrations, including the Trail of Broken Treaties march in 1972 and the 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973.

Studi later helped revive a Cherokee newspaper, taught the language and then pivoted to acting. Along with his breakout roles in "Dances with Wolves" and "The Last of Mohicans," he is known for his turns in "Heat," "Street Fighter," "Geronimo: An American Legend" and "Avatar." 

Studi is often credited with bringing more dimension to Indigenous roles and paving the way for native-led projects like "Rutherford Falls" and "Reservation Dogs" (the latter of which he's appeared on). Ahead of his awards ceremony in Old City, he spoke with PhillyVoice about some of his famous roles, acting as an adrenaline replacement for combat and his ever-evolving understanding of history.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

PhillyVoice: Since we're at the Museum of the American Revolution I'm wondering how you first heard about the story of the American Revolution. Do you remember learning it in school? And how did you feel about that, given that your ancestors already inhabited this nation?  

Wes Studi: Well, at that point in time, I had no real understanding of history or my connection to my own people, as well as the differences that were politically in place at the time, because it was probably what, fourth or fifth grade? It sounded to me like any other kind of story that you would read in a book, and the teachers would try to get across to students that it had something to do with us. But how does a 10-, 12-year-old kid, how does that child connect their lives in the present to something that happened, at that point, probably 150 to 200 years ago? It was all very difficult. And most of the things that we heard in school, as I remember, were simply stories that were being told. And I suppose we were supposed to believe them, but it was just a matter of, OK, learn this, put it in your head, and if asked about it, report what you heard. 

I suppose that's a method of learning things, but essentially it means nothing, right? I mean, these are just dates, people, time, and when things actually supposedly happened. So I really can't speak to the question you asked me. But that's how I see it at this point in time. In terms of history, that's what makes it all very dynamic and an ever-changing kind of a thing, because it all depends on the interpretation we give it. And as a student at that time, I was fairly incapable of making any kind of interpretation about it. So I have no idea how I felt about it at the time. 

PV: When do you feel like you started to make those connections between yourself and wider history that you didn't feel at the time? And then when did you form an interpretation?

Studi: Much later in life. Much later in life, I began to actually understand what it all meant to me in my own personal life. And that would've been after I had been deployed to Vietnam in the military, after I came back and became politically aware of my own situation. And then from that point on, beyond me was my family, my clan, my people, and then the society in general. That's when I began to think about things like that. Like on a political basis. And I suppose then I understood what had come about because of the American Revolution, and how it affected my people. 

In North America, in my view, I think it was a matter of an arrested development because we had to begin to deal with a power that we hadn't expected from Europe. And that was, what, four-pronged? From the U.K., from France, Spain to the south and Denmark was involved. How many different nations came over here to claim a piece of this, of North America?

And that's essentially what I began to learn, was the development of what we now live in, and how much of a part we as Indigenous people played in the whole thing. It was certainly a beginning of my understanding of how all of these different powers came to be. And when I say powers, I don't mean just the Europeans. I mean, what was already here, the Indigenous powers that were already here, and how their efforts and their goals played into the formation of the society, the culture that we live in now.

PV: Would you say that that sort of journey of understanding you were on coming back from Vietnam, is that what led you to Wounded Knee and other protests and occupations? 

Studi: Yes. That's what was going on at the time amongst people who had time to think about what was going on politically in the world, here in the United States. And of course, it was following mostly the civil rights organizations' efforts throughout the states, as well as a lot of civil unrest at the time. It's very much like what's going on in the states today. There's a lot of unrest, division and a lot of people who are pushing their own agendas within the United States to form the kind of government that they believe we should all live under. And essentially that's what was going on during the civil unrest of the '70s, which is what gives me my outlook on the society and the culture in which we live. 

But it's also sort of the same thing that was happening during the time of the American Revolution. It's actually pretty timely in that we're here studying about that particular revolution when we've been, in my lifetime, through a process which I would think of as revolutionary in changes to our American culture and form of government. That's essentially what we're going through right now because of the changes that are being proposed and some acted upon. I think at this point, we're at a divergence of opinion, attitude, philosophies, and we really are at a time that is going to determine how our young people are going to live for the next, my guess is 30 to 50 years.

And then another (revolution) probably is going to happen in terms of culture and society. I think it is kind of a cycle that societies and cultures go through. But that's simply my opinion under an understanding of life as we know it. 

PV: Have you always felt a part of these kind of cultural and social revolutions that have happened in your lifetime? And, if you have, how did that feel to be in the middle of that?

Studi: Actually no, I did not. The earlier part of my life, I think I was simply a recipient of whatever was there and already planned. And that's essentially how a young person grows up, I suppose. I don't think that I understood before I was, let's say before I was 30 years old, the fact that we all actually participate in our own life. And the societal life that we create, right? But once you do understand that you can have an effect on an individual basis, either by voting and or being active in political life or cultural life, then that's when you become an aware adult who can be called on to be responsible enough to have an opinion and an idea on which way your own society should move for the better of all, rather than just yourself. Which we have a huge lack of right now in the White House, I would say. But that's just my opinion, and no one else's, unfortunately. 

PV: Do you mind speaking more to that lack you feel is there right now in the White House? 

Studi: I don't think anyone's thinking about the good of the whole. I believe in the White House right now, what is going on is way too many individuals there with their own agenda for gain. And I think there has to be more thought about how our future generations are going to be able to live in the kind of world that we provide for them. I think that's an idea that is lacking in the current administration. 

PV: I wanted to reference something I read on your website, going back a bit to that time when you were getting into political activism returning from Vietnam. You wrote about having these feelings that you were trying to work through, but you recognized that your "current path could lead to self-destruction," and you pivoted toward working with Cherokee Nation and eventually acting. What did you mean by that, your current path could lead to self-destruction? 

Studi: Well, that's on a personal level. And at the time, having served in Vietnam for a year, I think I had developed what I call a need for adrenaline. It's something that people in combat like that develop because you need it in order to keep yourself alive essentially, and to make it home. Most of the service guys that I was with at the time were there to serve a purpose. I was there essentially to find out what I would do in a combat situation, and I found out. But once I found out, the next goal is simply to make it back home and to make it back home alive and uninjured, if at all possible. But in any case, I digress. What did you ask me? 

PV: What did you mean by you felt like you could be on a path to self-destruction? 

Studi: Well, see, like I said, there was the idea of this when I came home. There's a famous quote, which I can't really remember well right now, but it has something to do with war may be hell, but peace can be worse, or at least just as bad as war in terms of getting used to the fact that once you have been in a combat situation on a 24/7 basis, coming home to peace is not a quick and easy adjustment. And I think we can see evidence of that in the amount of PTSD in veterans that we see in the United States now. I mean, people who have been there way after Vietnam. Afghanistan, Iran, and the conflicts over there. The people that have come home from that and are living on the streets or who haven't made the adjustment back to peace very easily. 

Well, that need for adrenaline is a part of that problem. I think at least it was the larger part for me, that I needed this adrenaline that I had gotten used to. And how do you go about finding that? Well, you have to create dangerous situations for yourself. That could be in any number of ways. I tried things like rodeo, something that's dangerous in terms of climbing on animals that don't want you on their backs, and other things as well that are perhaps somewhat illegal. So that was the idea that I was talking about. There's a certain self-destruction that comes from that endeavor.

PV: So did you feel that once you started acting, you could kind of harness that adrenaline? 

Studi: It actually was a therapy. I found that it did provide that amount of fear, anxiety in terms of actually getting on stage in front of people and speaking. What I had for self-protection was dialogue provided to me that I had to learn in cues. I had to go be here at this spot to say this, at that spot to say that. I had a structure wherein once activated, then it moves into a performance seeking the sweet spot of everything that your story is allowing you to tell. I equate it to finding the sweet spot with a tennis racket, to a baseball, to hitting one in music. Hitting the sweet spot is where you find comfort and a safety and you have overcome this particular fear that you have. The adrenaline that it produces is what I was searching for in order to feel alive again, if you will. Theater, it provided that for me. So I think that was one of the reasons that I didn't have to continue to find adrenaline through more dangerous ways. 

PV: Speaking of learning your lines, you've spoken so many native languages in film over your career. At your Academy Awards ceremony, Christian Bale said it was over two dozen. How do you pick up that many new languages? 

Studi: We don't actually pick them up. At least I didn't actually pick them up. There's no way that I could actually learn the meaning of the languages. But you can do it phonetically. And in order to do it phonetically and do it well phonetically, you also have to act it. So you need to be able to convey what the actual words mean. There are certain sounds that you can ask from a person who actually knows the language — which part of this word or set of syllables that you're learning actually conveys the meaning of whatever it is that you're saying at the time. Which part of it conveys that emotion, which is what an actor does mainly, conveys meaning through emotion and dialogue. So that's how you go about hopefully being able to speak a language that can be understood by the actual speakers. 

That has always been my only real goal in using other languages, is hoping that the Huron people who know the language, the people who know Delaware, Apache, Pawnee, oh God, however many languages I've used over the years, hopefully they can understand what I'm saying. I know I'll have an accent. But hopefully they can understand the words, and that's what means the most to me in terms of being authentic about it. 

PV: Have you gotten that feedback from those speakers?

Studi: The Pawnee thought highly enough of me to put my image from "Dances with Wolves" in their tribal hall of fame. As well as the Apache, I think, appreciated my efforts to play Geronimo. Yeah, I've done pretty well.

PV: In past interviews, when you're talking about "The Last of the Mohicans," you've said that (director) Michael Mann was open to expanding your character Magua, to making him more three-dimensional. Can you tell me about that a little more in practice, about those expansions? Was there anything you specifically asked for? 

Studi: What he asked for, or I asked for?

PV: What you asked for.

Studi: I actually didn't realize that it was expanding as it was happening. You might remember what kind of character Magua was in earlier versions of "Last of the Mohicans." He was pretty one-dimensional. But as time went by, my first indication was I got a bigger trailer. My trailer got bigger, my driver was much more efficient, and there all the time, and the car was always ready to go whenever I was ready to go. But as time went on, Magua's character got more rewrites and additional dialogue. 

I began to learn that Michael does have a penchant for featuring the guy who just really is in a bind and has to come out fighting one way or another, which was essentially Magua's intent and his part of the story was just that. Was the desperation brought on by other factors and how he was fighting back against it and focusing most of his direction toward that one particular character, the "gray hair," who actually turned out to be one of the better friendships I cultivated during that time. That grew into more than I had ever expected, because my friend, Maurice Roëves, a Scottish man, came to be very good friends with our family. He and his wife bought a place in Santa Fe, used to come out every summer, and we would see them several times a year. But again, I digress. I forgot what I was talking about, but the gray hair and I were actually very good friends, as it turned out. His wife still visits us from time to time. 

PV: Magua is one of several warriors you've played over the years. How did your military background factor in? Did that inform any of your acting choices? 

Studi: I'm sure it did. Because that's all an actor has are his own previous individual reactions to what happens around him. I think it served me well that I knew how to use weapons of all kinds to some extent, physical hand-to-hand kind of combat. We went through a number of weeks of training before "Last of the Mohicans" in terms of using the old-style powder guns and hatchets and knives. And yeah, a lot of hand-to-hand and survival skills out in the woods, out in the forest. To me it was, here we go, we're gonna go camping again. But yeah, all of that served me well. It always has. In fact, the very first job that I ever got out of Hollywood, if you will, was for a TV pilot where I got hired because the producer asked me, OK, this is all we need is someone who can ride a horse, shoot a gun, speak a language other than English simultaneously. Can you do that? I said, yes, I can do that. You're on <laugh>. So I signed, and that was my first job.

PV: Did it help you get into the emotional head space, too? I mean, obviously, as you said, it helps to know how to use a gun and ride a horse, but more in terms of like the fear and pressure or just day-to-day of being in a combat zone. 

Studi: It's survival. Yeah. It's essential survival. And it's a matter of yes, you have to be able to kill somebody if they're there and in front of you and they're out to kill you or that's the idea. If they're gonna kill you, you've got to kill them first so you can live. So it is survival. I think everything else goes out the window. Maybe you're there patriotically fighting for your country, but you really don't think about your country or freedom back home or anything like that. All you're really there to do is stay alive. 

PV: This award you're receiving is given to individuals who advance public understanding of history. How do you think your roles in your entire career have challenged previous understandings of Native history or American history? 

Studi: I think we have challenged a lot of them over the years in terms of the roles that I played. I always like to say that playing the good guy or the bad guy, in my own philosophy, I always play my guys no matter what they do as the good guy because my guy is doing what is right for him. And when it comes down to good guys and bad guys in movies, well, it all depends on which side of the fence you are still on. 

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