Sandra Hale Schulman
Special to ICT
The ambitious new Kevin Costner film series “Horizon – An American Saga” needed authenticity to portray Native culture from the 1800s. They found that in Dr. David Bearshield, Cheyenne-Arapaho and Kiowa of Oklahoma.
As the “Horizon” films’ Native affairs senior development director, Bearshield, who now lives in Albuquerque, had been working with Mo Brings Plenty from “Yellowstone” on a tribal political issue and Mo referred him to the costume team as they were looking for a Native American who understood the preservation of the culture needed to be showcased correctly.
“Horizon” is being made in four parts with Part One having been recently released. Part Two’s release date was planned for August but will now be announced at a later date.
“Costner wanted to ensure that the correct jewelry, clothing, and precise way of the language was going to be preserved, because that was Kevin Costner’s number one respect to Indian Country to ensure that,” Bearshield told ICT. “When they found me, I had already been plugged in with a lot of the tribes of Southwest America and beyond.”
The film saga is an ambitious project, with four films being released to theaters then to streaming.
“It’ll be the first time ever that there was a western showcased within that time frame of the American movement into the Southwest,” Bearshield says. “Costner spent about $38 million of his own money to ensure that his dream would come true. But he also let me know that this dream could not have come true unless it was going to be portrayed the way that it is supposed to because in his 36 years of working in the industry, he wanted to maintain something that was going to be precise and even better than ‘Dance with Wolves.’
“One of the great things about this particular team was they drew on amazing Native American horsemen – Steven Yellowtail from Montana, Dougie Hall from Montana and others. The key horse riders made it so simple, which was astonishing to the team as they got to know their horses riding bareback. These people played significant roles and we made sure that we were well represented in that area.”
Bearshield says he pulled all this knowledge together from working in tribal government.
“My work was always governmental,” he says.” My work was always influential in making sure that there was a compliance side to my work. I worked in a lot of administrations where I would come in and find the problems and I would fix them. What I became in that time frame was a delegator. I spent the majority of my life and who I am as an individual tribal member at the forefront of entertainment, what our family was known for, our singing voices. I’ve always desired to be in projects where I did work in the background and watched them all come to play, and this is one that put 20-plus years of experience from working in IHS, working in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, working with different agencies, working with different tribes in the United States, and working in the security industry in Albuquerque.
“I worked with chairmen, I worked with legislatures, I worked with congressmen, I worked with mayors, and it was an amazing time to put all of that into this project because I’d never been involved in the movie industry ever in my life. This was the very first time and I was able to put all those skill assets together, and Kevin Costner loved every bit of it. He still asks me, ‘How did you do it? I don’t know how you went to language classes on ‘Horizon,’ horseback riding afterwards, making sure that costumes were in place, making sure hair and makeup was accurate, making sure that all the background people were taken care of, making sure that everyone had the opportunity to feel important.’”
Bearshield says he has always worked hard in Indian Country to ensure that his people have a voice and are given a seat at the table. He did a lot of pre-production work and was on the set as well to follow through. He says Costner was assured that when the actors were doing their scenes the whole crew knew that everything from costumes to language was accurate.
“I ensured that they went to language class, that they were fully dressed the way that they needed to be with, and hair and the makeup team was a powerful part of everything.
It is not always easy to keep egos in check and people in line in a large production. But it reminded me of working for my own people for my chairman, vice chairman, secretary, treasurer, and the business committee to move them together as one so that we can anchor toward the very precise decision-making that needed to be done for the betterment of whatever project that we were working on. I learned how to multitask, and I thank the creator for being able to allow me to work in those time frames.”
The “Horizon” crew has already finished Part Three and they’re working on Part Four in Utah. The film starts in the early 1800s and ends around 1860, with what happened to the Apache and Pima tribes decades before the treaties and reservations were starting to be formed, when Manifest Destiny inspired westward expansion.
“Kevin Costner told me, ‘Dr. Bearshield, I don’t want to rewrite history, but I want to tell the accuracy behind it to make sure that people can understand on all levels that Native America did go through trauma and that this is the reason why the American West is the way it is now, we captured it to the utmost.’”
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