Editor’s note: Actor Graham Greene, Oneida from the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario, died Sept. 1 in Toronto.

Kevin Abourezk
ICT

I didn’t know Graham Greene, but I knew Kicking Bird. I imagined riding a horse beside him on a vast grassy field on the way to my first buffalo kill. I imagined lying beside Black Shawl, played by the regal Tantoo Cardinal, the buffalo robe keeping us warm as the wind whipped cold against our tipi. And like everyone in the Rapid City theatre where I watched “Dances With Wolves” on its opening weekend, I laughed heartily as Kicking Bird startled at the sight of a naked Kevin Costner.

I walked out of that theatre feeling for the first time that it was cool to be Indian, a feeling I’ve never quite shaken.

I didn’t know Graham Greene, but I knew Walter Crow Horse. Shit, who didn’t want to be the pissed-off, bad-ass rez cop who dared to talk smack to Sam Shepard and Val Kilmer – two of the slickest macho men to grace the big screen? I pondered for many minutes how this cowboy hat-wearing, eagle feather-adorned Sherlock could hunch down, look at a footprint and deduce that Ray Levois’ narcissism is what drove him to wear sharp-looking but ill-fitting shoes.

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I didn’t know Graham Greene, but I knew Malachi Strand, the tribal police chief turned drug kingpin and big boss bad guy in my favorite western TV series, “Longmire.” Man, I hated that sonuvvabitch! No level of frontier justice could be too extreme to settle his karmic debts. And I have to admit, I saw a little bit of Malachi in Maximus, the delusional desert sage from “Reservation Dogs” whose slightly sadistic sense of humor reminded me of the drunk uncles I had to endure as a young man.

Now that I think about it, maybe I did know Graham Greene. It’s true I never met him. If I’m being honest, I rarely seek to meet my heroes as they never quite measure up to my expectations. I mean, whose real-life personality could fill the moccasins and match the gravitas of a traditional chief of the free Lakota people? I realize I’m saying much more about myself here than I am about the hard-working actors and actresses whose theatrical personas have helped me craft my own Indigenous identity.

But I always worried I might see some hint of Malachi in Graham’s laugh and that I would in turn betray my hatred of the character before the very real man standing before me.

So I’ll try to forgive Graham for granting us only glimpses of the enigmatic characters he played and for failing to breathe life into these men so as to allow us to sit beside them on Walt Longmire’s porch, sipping coffee while they regaled us with their adventures, their tragedies, their great loves.

And I’ll try to forgive myself for expecting so much from a man I never met.

Kevin Abourezk is a longtime, award-winning Sicangu Lakota journalist whose work has appeared in numerous publications. He is also the deputy managing editor for ICT. Kevin can be reached at kevin@ictnews.org.