“I could be a ninja, I could be a pirate or I could be in a play y’know.”

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.

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

A society is healthy only when it allows its members to discuss their thoughts openly. This is also the only way that a society can gather consensus, let everyone express his or her wish, and foster creativity.

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little.

Awareness yields to itself, to its inherent creativity, to its expression in form, to experience itself.

The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.

It has been a process ever since and I am now a big advocate in the message that we are not alone and we all have ample creativity within us if we just trust it.

What I could not learn was to think creatively on schedule.

She helped me wake up to the fact that I had a source of creativity that was my true creative nature and when I embraced it and asked for this presence in my life.

We are not alone and we all have ample creativity within us if we just trust it.