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Now 70, Farmer is a legendary figure among North Americas Native artists and entertainers.
Hes done his job, and now its time to pass the baton.
And you know what?
I used to produce.
I used to direct.
Now I get to sit back and just be the actor.
When somebody says the titleReservation Dogs, whats the first thing you think about?We didnt know.
How important it would be?Yeah!
All those people on the creative side of the show are going to be employed for a long time.
But the networks just didnt buy in.
Are you bummed about that?Life goes on.
It was a sweet part, and probably my most recognizable character ever.
I mean, I make jokes about 18-year-old white waitresses realizing, Its Uncle Brownie!
I never hadthataudience, you know?
Ive always had a Native American following.
Its incredible looking back over everything youve done.
There are so many connection points with other major performers from many generations.
It was nice to finally meetBenicio Del Toroafter all those years of watching him.
He beat me out in that great awards thing.
You know the one?
The one they started off down on the Santa Monica beach?
The Independent Spirit Awards?
Im not sure what they call it anymore.
They still call it the Spirit Awards!Okay, good.
Its always held the night before the Academy Awards, right?
It was a great event.
So many great independent films got recognition.
Many of them, of course, went on to the Oscars as well.
I dont know, Im just … maybe Ill see it eventually.
But I dont need to see us murdered 20 times before the credits.
Been there, done that, you know?
The film is notustelling the story.
Ive been promoting a book by Linda Hogan, whos Achocta [Chickasaw].
Thirty-three years ago, right?
Ive been talking this book up for 33 years!
So anyway, no, I havent seenKillers of the Flower Moon.
Am I going to be a cop?
Thats certainly not going to help.
Am I going to be a social worker?
Maybe a lawyer?Once I discovered the theater, I just knew.Oh,thisis how I do it.
I started acting at 20 and I never turned back.
And there was the triptych ofPowwow Highway,Smoke Signals, andSioux Citywithin the space of just five years.
Set in Lame Deer, up in Montana!
Jonathan Wacks directed it and Peter McCarthy produced it.
I think that was Jonathans directorial debut.
One of them, I married:Jean Stawarz.
She ended up teaching screenwriting at Emerson College and is still on the faculty there.
Working on that film was a wonderful journey.
I met people Im still dear friends with.
Im still in touch with Jonathan, and A Martinez and I are as close as ever.
A lot of those actors are gone now, of course.
It was certainly an important film.
It won the Audience Award at Sundance.
What was the play?Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, by Tomson Highway.
Tell me about that.We came up together.Tomson is a classical pianistand his brother was a modern dancer.
I was a photographer when we met.
Tomson brought us to the Shaw Festival, which is a big-time event in Toronto.
I captured it with photography.
Tomson did the Cree part of my speech.
It was the first time they brought Indigenous language to a play.
It was just a beautiful time, you know?
And then Tomson started to write his own plays.
It put theater on its nose in Canada when we put it on in 1989.
We took most of the awards, and then it won the Governor Generals Award for playwriting.
It still gets picked up.
Its a powerful piece.
It just works so well.
And hes such a verbose, quadrilingual dude, Tomson hes quite a character.
Much of the senior actors came up through that system.
Theres more money for the arts generally than there is here.
Thats quite a time span!My grandmother and Grahams father are first cousins.
I was in the States mostly, but Id go back to stay at my grandmothers home.
Graham was across the street from us with, like, eight brothers and sisters.
Wed known each other since we were children.
I was the only child for about eight years.
We ended up in the same rehearsal halls just by chance.
But wed been pals for years before that.
He used to be a road man, doing sound and lights for some really popular Canadian musical acts.
I got to teach an acting class through the American Indian Registry.
The thing I got the most from it was that studying acting was scene studies.
You just match people up as partners and get them to work the scene, you know?
Well, all those guys from Oklahoma, they were always very manly, right?
Theyd just come and watch, then theyd get up there with no rehearsal!
But, yeah, Ive known Wes for years.
In fact, I was just thinking about calling Wes today to help me with my pipe.
Ill never forget it.
I learned so much about myself.
You gotta learn when to let go and when to hold up for something you believe in.
Im gonna put you inGhost Dogand show em that Nobodys still alive!
We had a wonderful relationship through that one character.
I think Nobodys gonna come back once more, if we both live long enough to do it.
There are so many things about that experience that seem incredible to me.
Hes like a relative.
We stay in touch.
We dont yuk it up as much as we used to, because were getting older.
What happened?Harvey wanted Jim to cut the movie, and Jim refused.
So Harvey dumped it.
Jim funded it independently from, I think, Europe and Asia mainly.
There was a certain bitterness after that, about the fact thatDead Mandidnt get a better run.
Jim couldnt go to the ceremony.
He sent Johnny Depp and me and Robby Muller, the cinematographer.
We had a great time in Berlin.
Gandhi gave us the award.
Well, not the real Gandhi.
The guy who played him.
Ben Kingsley.[Laughs.]
And I had a great relationship with Neil Young afterDead Man.
Not long after that, I was trying to develop a national radio system for Native people in Canada.
I told Jim before we startedDeadMan, Hey, lets do this story contemporary like, now!
Because thats my life, you know?
The character of Nobody was abducted as a child and taken to Europe by Europeans.
I was the only Indian in an immigrant school in Buffalo.
I work there a lot still, in Buffalo, with the Native community.
That border has never meant anything to us hey, wanna hear something great?
In 2028, lacrosse is going to be in the Summer Olympics.
We still dont get any respect politically, though.
Its been an uphill battle, even down to basics like infrastructure for water.
It certainly serves a purpose to retell American history from a Native perspective.
Thats why it was so great to hang out with the cast and crew onRez Dogs.
Theyre a pretty interesting batch of people.
I think the show inspired a lot of actors, too.
Thats been the basis of my work, to have a go at inspire people.
I needed inspiration coming up.
Im so unique, you know?
First, by being a Native actor.
Plus, Im big.
Im six-foot-three and 270 pounds.
They used to tell me I ate up the screen.
That made it hard to get work.
Its been a hard road, you know?
He does theater, too.
Montana is a little off-the-beaten-path kind of guy.
He doesnt seem to fit into the norms.
I like supporting his artistic nature, though.
I play an old, dying dog whos about to get euthanized.
And I did manage to get Tantoo Cardinal involved.
She kind of plays opposite me.Tantoo and I were both onSpirit Bay, which started in 1982.
It was a story aboutBill C-31.
Do you know it?
In Ontario, women who were married off to another tribe lost their status as Native people.
There were other ways somebody could lose their status.
The passage of that bill was a big win for women.
Eras of oppression and disenfranchisement, I guess, have always befallen us.
Its been interesting to chart the history from my perspective as an actor.
Its all about who gets out of the gate.
I mean, there wasRutherford Falls.
But most of the creatives fromReservation Dogsare showrunning or working to tell their own stories.
Theyre not trying to make anotherReservation Dogs.
Some of the directors are now in the circle for directing shows that arent necessarily Native-themed.
Sterlins got a paved road ahead of him, you know?
He should be okay, right?
It seems that anything he touches is gonna turn to gold.
Or at least itll make audiences think.
What about you?Im a 70-year-old actor.
Im on the tail end of a wonderful career.
Im still able to work, and Im counting onResident Aliengetting renewed next year!
Now its coming out in January, so we wont know about being renewed until maybe March.
And then six months later … you know, I could be starving to death by then.
I gotta start from the ground up again as a working actor.
Its been my life, though.
Im used to that.
