Actor Adam Beach from Dog Creek First Nation in Manitoba. Photo courtesy Facebook.
A Hollywood actor from a First Nation in Manitoba says he is hoping to help change depictions of Indigenous people in film and television.
Adam Beach, originally from Dog Creek First Nation northwest of Winnipeg, was a speaker at the University of Saskatchewan on Monday night. Beach was speaking at the university to deliver the Gail Appel Lectureship on Literature and Fine Arts.
His lecture was titled Rewriting the Hollywood Indian. While speaking to a packed house of nearly 300 people at the University’s Convocation Hall, Beach spoke about many things, including his attempts to break Indigenous stereotypes in film.
“I found myself realizing that if I look into the history books and the stories of our people and our ancestors, it’s all there, but it has been misrepresented and misinterpreted along the way,” Beach told the audience.
The Indigenous actor has over 80 film and television credits to his name. He may be recognized from his appearances in the Clint Eastwood war epic Flags of our Fathers, alongside Nicolas Cage in Wind Talkers, last year’s summer blockbuster Suicide Squad and as the main character in CBC’s Arctic Air.
Beach says over the past couple years, he has made a decision to be defiant toward the industry to ensure Indigenous people are well-represented.
“So you guys will be hearing me over the next while, in the media, pushing the envelope and calling out people who are misrepresenting us,” he said. “Within myself, I am going to redefine the truth of who I am as an Anishinaabe man.”
Beach says he recently turned down roles because non-Indigenous actors were cast in Indigenous roles. He says identity is so important to Indigenous people and hopes a proper Indigenous identity can be reflected in film in television.
“If we can love and comfort ourselves with that identity, it can do a lot of magical things, and I am proof of that,” he said. “So if we can stop abandoning who we are it will wake us up.”
Beach is also the founder of the Adam Beach Film Institute in Winnipeg, which trains Indigenous students in the craft of filmmaking.
He is hoping his speaking engagements will help improve the profile and success of Indigenous people.