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

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.

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.

Success isn’t about the biggest house in the world. Success is about loving your family, taking care of your child.

We have to know that they exist and we have to take care of those traumas and learn to heal from them.

A beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel.

It’s a mistake to think that we have to be lovely to be loved by human beings or by God.

Human beings are funny. They long to be with the person they love but refuse to admit openly.

Kindness affects both humans and plants.

Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we are not perfect.

The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.

We knew that in the end what they were clashing over was us, what to do with the blacks, and whether or not to start treating us as human beings.

People need motivation to do anything. I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation.