“With this film, it’s nice to see that the trauma is presented from a white male that was in the Civil War and that trauma affects him in a way that still exists.”

He was out with his friends drinking and on medication for depression, and he didn’t come out of the water alive.

After that movie I said, “Y’know what, I have to realistically wear my emotions now when I do a job. That’s gotta be as real as it gets. It’s not just dialogue anymore.”

I do a lot of inspirational talks for kids, to motivate them to change their lives and give them hope.

This movie shows that perspective from Scott’s character, and I love it. It shows the American Indians as the ones who respect and help out when people are needed. It’s a nice little twist.

Well to me growing, up I’ve had my own psychological war with my parents dying at such a young age. My mother was killed by a drunk driver, then two months later my father drowned.

I’m not gonna fall. I’m tired of falling. I’m tired of seeing our people fall. I don’t believe in failure.

Smoke Signals really mirrored the way I grew up and how I felt, and that movie was the first time I’d dealt with my parents’ death and how I felt that loss and sadness and anger.

It’s what we put in our minds and our hearts to succeed. And success isn’t about money.

Acting for me was an escape and it wasn’t until Smoke Signals that made me realize that acting is a personal development and challenge to grow.

I think when I started acting it was the first time I got the freedom of expression.

When faced with structural injustice, especially in the form of oppressive military occupations,

We [Americans] have a historical trauma when it comes to the past relationships when it comes to Native Americans and the history of how America was created.

Ever since I started acting, I’ve always spoken to our people about identity. I’ve spoken to kids, telling them: “Where do I get my strength to push through the barriers to get me where I’m at today? It’s my culture and my traditions, you know?

Growing up with sexual abuse and having to be in gangs and dealing with my own trauma; finding the cultural identity when I was 16, and learning those traditional ways saved me from hurting myself.

We [Native Americans] respect being human beings, but also the natural and spiritual world and I thought that came across wonderfully

I was able to express certain emotions and feelings that I could put into other characters, so it was a good way for me to run away from ho I personally was.

They make solitude, which they call peace.

I can imagine no greater misfortune for a cultured people than to see in the hands of the rulers not only the civil, but also the religious power.

In the 1960s, the civil rights movement was about getting to know your culture, your history. I know all about my history.

Atheists have just as much civil right to teach atheism as Christians have to teach Christianity; agnostics have just as much right to teach agnosticism as Christians have to teach their religion.

What’s so civil about war anyway?

Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play.

We’ve talked more about civil rights after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than we talked about it before 1964.

We have to put a stop to the idea that it is a part of everybody’s civil rights to say whatever he pleases.