Editor’s note: Spoilers ahead.
Sandra Hale Schulman
Special to ICT
LOS ANGELES — In a dynamic casting coup, real life Shoshone Derek Hinkey rides away with the show as fierce Shoshone warrior Red Feather in 1857 who defends his people by fighting back against pioneers, the military and in a new bad guy twist, Mormons.
“American Primeval,” now on Netflix, has become a global streaming hit, and also stars long-time Native actress Irene Bedard (“Pocahontas,” “Smoke Signals”) as his exasperated mother and tribal matriarch Winter Bird who only wants peace and to see her children survive.
Hinkey grew up on a reservation in northern Nevada. He is a direct descendant of War Chief Numaga. Numaga is the son of Chief Winnemucca, who is the son of Chief Truckee. Truckee is a Paiute-Shoshone.
“Red Feather is in my blood and DNA,” Hinkey told ICT from Las Vegas, Nevada. “It’s not acting; my body’s been here before.”
Hinkey says his grandfather called him Little Red as a kid. He became a wildfire fighter out of school, then was a professional fighter and stuntman.
“I was a U.S. elite amateur by the age of six. I did a lot of boxing. I’m from my reservation on the Oregon-Nevada border. I eventually did well, competing in the Western Olympic trials. After that, promoters wanted to sign me and my brother as professionals. We were on the fence,” he said.
They had to move to New York or Las Vegas.
“Being a family person, we wanted to stay closer to our people,” Hinkey said. They chose Las Vegas. “It was great boxing until I had an injury on my hand. I had a lot of free time, so I started doing some coaching.”
Living in Las Vegas affords a lot of unusual work opportunities.
Derek next got into a Medieval live show where he was jousting in full armor on horseback. Seeking more opportunity, his wife found an audition for “Django,” a TV series in Romania which he tried out for and won. He had a few speaking lines along with being a stuntman.
That unusual role, along with his 6-feet-1-inch height, muscular build, and striking looks caught the attention of casting directors who felt he needed to stop doing stunts and be an actor.
He didn’t even have to leave Las Vegas for Los Angeles or New York when he got his first American job as a supporting lead on a movie called “Americana” by director Tony Tost. The 2023 film also included actors Sydney Sweeney and Zahn McClarnon.
He continued to audition when “American Primeval” came his way.
“It hit home. The character was a lot like my great, great, great, great grandfather,” Hinkey said. “I just knew this is the one. I speak Shoshone. My grandfather was Paiute and Shoshone. My grandmother was Paiute. Paiute language is similar to Shoshone.”
Hinkey calls himself an Indian cowboy. He grew up on a ranch and his father’s family were “generational ranchers.”
“I used to ride steers and bulls when I was a kid, and train young colts. With all that physical experience and my language skills, they allowed me to do my own stunts,” he said. “Everything you see is me. I thought that was really important to who Red Feather was. He’s one of those guys that’s fearless. It’s an intense story.”
A new story twist is the violent, murderous trek of the Mormons to their Zion in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Shoshone end up fighting them and the U.S. military.
“I have a lot of Mormon friends,” Hinkey said. “We had a lot of conversations about what a layman’s right was, so I learned a lot about the religion. If we go and we put extremists to any religion, then you get horrible people.”
He continued, “Beyond that for me, it was one of those things where the universe was winking at me. My first main role, I’m going to be able to portray my own people, and knowing my history, knowing what other religions have done to our people is, I felt I was reliving that moment shooting those scenes. It’s hurtful.”
In another strange twist, it’s ambiguous whether Red Feather dies or not at the end as you see many others fall. But not him.
Hinkey said that he was taught as a kid when the soldiers came in during the longest deadly Indian wars in U.S. history, they had “a medicine man that prayed over all of our warriors. And the medicine man said that when you get shot, you’ll take multiple hits, multiple bullets, and you won’t hit the ground. If you follow this, you’ll be strong. You’ll be almost invincible. So, it’s kind of weird that the ending is like that.”
He didn’t tell the director, Peter Berg, the story but he felt that Berg already knew.
Irene Bedard plays Red Feather’s mother where they are in some scenes together. Hinkey described her as “dynamic,” “phenomenal,” and “an icon.” Even with her reputation, Hinkey didn’t ask for help. He works a lot on his own and is “much to myself,” he said.
“I go through my own process,” he said. “But anytime you’re doing a scene with somebody, there’s that reacting to the action. She really was motherly and almost scolding at times, but the relationship with my mother still has that common respect because that’s my mom.”
The producers and director went to great lengths for the authenticity of the set and costumes.
For one, the discussion, consensus, and holding onto values among Indigenous societies.
“I think if you go back to our traditional ways, there’s always been those societies. The tribe says ‘Hey, this is our standpoint: we are a warrior society and we don’t agree with what the other members of the tribe want to do.’ So that was authentic,” Hinkey said.
Second was the costumes for the show.
Julie O’Keefe, Osage, served as the cultural consultant and project adviser for the mini series.
The director told Netflix that O’Keefe was “extremely valuable” for the accuracy.
“Julie was there every day making sure that we got it right — that we got the hair right, the jewelry right, the clothes right, the language right, the behavior right, for the time period and Nations,” Berg said. “We’re very mindful of how important it is that all of these different groups are honored, that our research and depictions are accurate.”
O’Keefe takes her role seriously as wanted to provide the department heads with as much accurate information as possible to ensure that all three Native nations and cultures were distinctly depicted. She wanted to avoid “some kind of a hodgepodge of cultures that have nothing to do with the Tribe being portrayed.”
“The department heads had cultural questions about symbols, tipis versus longhouses, language, warbonnets, hairstyles, style of moccasins, props, food, burial rites, clan names — everything pertaining to the culture of how these three different Tribal Nations lived,” she told Netflix. “My approach comes from an academic approach focused on authenticity.”
Hinkey was impressed with the costume and set design. “I was blown away,” he said.
He had no issues moving in the costumes even with the weight loss from the rigor of filming. He started filming the series at a little over 200 pounds and finished the series at 164.
“I actually didn’t realize that I had lost that much weight, it just happened,” he said.
However, with all takes, doing his own stunts (and having to be “quick, agile, fast”), and working with a big horse, it all adds up.
“I had a great horse who I don’t think gets enough credit, our animals in these films, my horse was huge,” he recalled. “I had to throw Abish (a Mormon woman captured by the Shoshone) up there as I ride bareback, and she’s in full costume.”
Next for Hinkey
Hinkey will be busy for some time.
He is filming another show soon that he couldn’t release the name of. But he will appear in season 3 of “Dark Winds” which returns to AMC and AMC+ on March 9.
“Then I have another possible show that I’ll be shooting after this and so I’m grateful that the work has paid off. I’m landing roles with no real resume or credits,” he said. “Being a rookie to this, I’m always going to be a student in all I do. I’m just keeping my head down, doing the work.”
“American Primeval” is now streaming all 6 episodes on Netflix as of Jan. 9.
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