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In Native Lights, people in Native communities around Mni Sota Mkoce - a.k.a. Minnesota - tell their stories about finding their gifts and sharing them with the community. These are stories of joy, strength, history, and change from Native people who are shaping the future and honoring those who came before them.
Native Lights is also a weekly, half-hour radio program hosted by Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe members and siblings, Leah Lemm and Cole Premo. Native Lights is a space for people in Native communities.
Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine is produced by Minnesota Native News and Ampers, Diverse Radio for Minnesota’s Communities with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage fund. Online at https://minnesotanativenews.org/
[Music: Native Lights Theme]
Gary Farmer: The acting has sustained me. I mean, I've been self-employed as an actor for 50 years. I mean, there's been thin years, but it's taken care of me. I just been so blessed that way to live a creative life for 50 years. So it allows me to explore, you know, the other side of me, the other side of my brain, in a way, creating music and executing music and playing shows.
Leah Lemm: Boozhoo, hello. Welcome to Native Lights, where Indigenous voices shine. I'm your host Leah Lemm. Miigwech for joining me today. Native Lights is more than a podcast and radio show. At its core, it's a place for Native folks to tell their stories each and every week, we have captivating conversations with great guests from a bunch of different backgrounds. We're talking actors, musicians, community leaders, doctors, healthcare advocates, educators, you name it, bunch of different passions. We talk with them about their gifts and how they share those gifts with their community, and it all centers around the big point of purpose in our lives. And I can't wait to continue amplifying Native voices today. Yes, it's just me. Hey, I had this opportunity. We had this opportunity to speak to our guest today. And you know, with everything, schedules and things like that. It's just me and my guest, Indigenous actor Gary Farmer. Gary Farmer is from the Cayuga Nation and has a long career in movies and TV, and he's a musician, Gary Farmer and the Troublemakers. But he's been in many films and television shows, Smoke Signals, Dead Man, Powwow Highway and, of course, more recently, he played Uncle Brownie in Reservation Dogs. And Gary is just one of the most recognizable Indigenous faces in film. He's also a storyteller and, like I said, a musician, and just has this wonderful voice pushing for authentic Indigenous representation. So he's joining me today to talk about, you know, what's going on in his life, his music, some acting, and, of course, his gifts and purpose in his life. So I'm really happy he took some time out of his schedule to talk to Native Lights. Welcome to the show, Gary Farmer.
Gary Farmer: Hi.
Leah Lemm: How are you good?
Gary Farmer: Good.
Leah Lemm: Thank you so much for joining me. Can you please take a moment and introduce yourself?
Gary Farmer: [Introduces himself in Cayuga language.] I said, in my Cayuga language, I'm from Six Nations along the Grand River, about 18 miles west of Hamilton, Ontario. Large community there, population wise, they've swindled most of the land away from us over the centuries, but we're still there, good and strong, about 30,000 I'd say, the general vicinity. You know, I was born right in the village there on the Six Nations. So I'm Cayuga, Mohawk and Tuscarora. So I got three of the Six Nations. You know, I live in New Mexico. I live in Santa Fe among the Pueblo Tiwa and Tewa, and lots of Dene and Apache, of course, and lots of tribes here in New Mexico. I feel really good here so far.
Leah Lemm: Well, how are you doing? How are you and your family doing? Oh, we're
Gary Farmer: Doing great, living good here in New Mexico for the last quite a few years, ever since I made the movie Powwow Highway, I've kind of hung by here. I just feel comfortable here anywhere with all the Indigenous people and, of course, all the, you know, Central and Mexico community, it's comforting. It's a comforting place to live.
Leah Lemm: Do you make it up to Minnesota often?
Gary Farmer: Yeah, I've always, I used to tour music a lot more than I do now. And I used to tour through there all the time, up north and Duluth and Minneapolis and everything in between. Back in my day, I'm saying, maybe 20 years ago, when the casinos were kind of just beginning to hop and I was always trying to convince the tribes with their casinos, the casinos, to devote a portion of their market budget to Indigenous talent, right? Always trying to develop, you know, the talent within our community, because it can sustain, it creates its own little economy.
Leah Lemm: Have you seen some movement on that more Indigenous performers?
Gary Farmer: Not really, no, yeah, there is some, you know, you know. I helped to found a lot of radio into Canada, so I'm very loyal. There's a site up there called IndigenousMusicCountdown.com, okay, and I'm in the midst of creating a lot of new music. And I've got a song on there. I'm going to vote for it right after the interview here. Yeah, it's Top 40 of Indigenous Music, and there's some American artists on there, but of course, mostly Canadians and stuff. But it's based out of Winnipeg. You can vote every week. And then there's a Top 40, and about 10 or 12 stations play the Top 40 on Friday nights or something. That's the kind of thing. I just think, you know, that's how we develop Indigenous talent. Situations like that that create opportunity for people.
Leah Lemm: Well, can you talk about more opportunity for Indigenous representation, kind of across the board, whether on screen or music or storytelling in general, even behind the scenes folks?
Gary Farmer: I've never been very much involved with plotting that course. I mean, I just execute opportunities that are presented to me, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't work out. But, you know, I'm not on any of the academy committees. I mean, as a screen actor, I just voted for the Screen Actors Guild Awards for the first time in years. You know, I spend a lot of my time these days, and I wish I could afford to do this more often, but just to create music. You know, I just fell in love with the process. I like making new songs, and I noticed that sometimes my material can uplift or make people think about things a bit and still entertain them. You know, that's the challenge, but it seems to be working these days later in my career, I guess you could call it, maybe it's my age. I guess that is attracting audiences and allows me to part time, live the dream of a touring, successful artist.
Leah Lemm: That's great, but that's tough, though, right? Like a lot of travel later nights.
Gary Farmer: I used to do a lot more, but I remember once we toured for two months straight. And you know, my little, we used to call it the Moby Dick. It was big whale of the van. I would book for months and then execute the tours. And I do two or three of them a year, you know, sometimes shorter than others, but that's where you build your skill, too. As a musician, the show really does become the thing, right? The music is the thing, because you can see them. Prove when you play night after night, town after town, you just get better at it. And that was my kind of training ground. I suppose.
Leah Lemm: You're listening to Native Lights, where Indigenous voices shine. Native Lights is produced by Minnesota Native News and AMPERS, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Today we're speaking with Gary Farmer, Indigenous musician, Indigenous actor. He's from the Cayuga nation and has a long career in movies and TV, and he's had his band, Gary Farmer & the Troublemakers for a couple decades now. He's also a storyteller, musician and a great voice, you know, speaking out for authentic Indigenous representation, and he's currently spending some time in Minnesota, making appearances and working. So I'm really happy he took some time out of his schedule to talk to Native Lights. Well, what sort of opportunities do you look out for, then, to present your music? I know you're doing some performances with Keith Secola around Northern Minnesota here. But you know, how do you decide where to go? Where does your music bring you?
Gary Farmer: Been touring these parts for well, so there's quite a few venues to play on my way there and on my way back. That's what you do. You get one or two solid gigs that are enabling you to work your way there and work your way home, and then you just fill in the blanks between those gigs, if they're in the same state or in the same region.
Leah Lemm: What started Gary Farmer and the troublemakers? How'd that get off the ground?
Gary Farmer: I don't know if you know an artist named James Luna who was a performance artist? You know, mountain Indians out of Southern California there, you know, they lived up at the top of the mountain. And James, he was an amazing character and writer, was really a museum treasure. You know, that's where he made his living doing, you know, all the big art installation type shows around the world, including the Biennale in Italy and stuff like that. So we became friends years ago. And, you know, I used to have to play LA quite a bit as an actor. It's kind of decentralized now, which is interesting. And really, I always thought we got to decentralize this place, but it just happened naturally with the, you know, the media changing. Anyway, I'm from between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, so when I got overwhelmed in Los Angeles, I always just headed south, up to the mountain. Those guys entertained me for years. And, you know, there was a band in there, and I was always a harmonica player, and James was, like, this performance artist. I used to have this VFW gig for music, because I had a band, and James would come and we, we'd improvise stuff to music and create poetry and funny stories and kind of really, kind of, a lot of it was with James, you know, was little, always kind of alcohol-induced. And they were all kind of Marines, ex-Marines and stuff. The naval base was right there in San Diego. So it was just like being home, you know, made me feel good at dealing with the large industry like Los Angeles.
Leah Lemm: Well, the band got started up, what, 20 years ago?
Gary Farmer: Yeah, and then we got a gig in Santa Fe and I never left. And I wasn't singing at the time. I was just the harp. I would sing and back up sing at the time. But eventually I was forced to sing, you know, because I couldn't afford to carry a singer, especially on the road for two months. So I started to sing, and then I started to write, then I started to make songs, and it was just a wonderful progression as a certainly not a retired actor, because acting is my thing, right? So always put that up front. But for me as a performer, music is a great way to stay in shape for anything. I grew up in theater, so there was a physicality to the theater. You know, you had to make your lungs work, the capacity all four lungs to be able to reach the back wall. You know that training is a young person led into these disciplines, and music was always my love.
Leah Lemm: Is there any song that kind of comes to mind of yours that maybe that you're revisiting?
Gary Farmer: "Toughest Girl in the World" is always like fun. "What You Gonna Do?" I wrote that song some years ago, but it's still so relevant. "Cadillacs Don't Care" is, you know, they can also watch the music video. It's the only music video I have, really. One called "Maple Tree" isn't really out there yet. And then another one "Working All the Time." It doesn't always work. You know, you write these songs, and then you try to produce them, and then fly them to the musicians, and then, you know, there's something wrong, there's something missing. And then you go back to the drawing table, and you think, oh, what did I base this on? Anyway, so you're always searching for concepts to execute your words, your spoken word. You know, sometimes you just get ideas and you just fly with them, and just works out, and you just so it's so precious.
Leah Lemm: How do you stay kind of motivated then to keep creating.
Gary Farmer: I've had the pleasure, you know, because acting has sustained me. I mean, I've been self-employed as an actor for 50 years, you know, like, I mean, there's been thin years, but it's taking care of me. My professional health insurance that I get through the Screen Actors Guild is it really takes care of me. And of course, forever get really sick. I just got to go home to Canada because it's social medicine, right? But I just been so blessed that way to live a creative life for 50 years. So it allows me to explore, you know, the other side of me, the other side of my brain, in a way, creating music and executing music and playing shows. And, you know, that's like family to me, all the players that we know as Indigenous artists, you know a lot of young ones I don't know, because I don't get, you know, often hooked up with a rapper, but I am doing an opening act for a rapper at the rez events in Las Vegas. Go with the flow, you know, and there is certainly, at some level, I mean, things are, are scary right now for all of us in tribal communities. You know, even my ability to kind of stay here, at least, I do have some place to go, my own community always, and I love it there. So I'm just in love with New Mexico and my family here, partner, so you just hold tight.
Leah Lemm: You talk to schools too.
Gary Farmer: I used to do, you know. I lost to Dr Joyce Brothers for Speaker of the Year in the university circuit several years ago. You know, I come from a history of a long lineage of orators, come from Six Nations, Haudenosaunee. I mean, the fact that there's any Indians in New York State is, like amazing. So we managed our talk our way to be able to stay in the East at some level. You know, was pretty scary times. I was just writing about it, George Washington. His name in our language is town destroyer. Yeah. I mean, I studied my language some, and I remember that every time we came up to it, that's, that's how he's referred to in our language, town destroyer, because he, he really, you know, he exploited us, right? Ben Franklin used all of ours, except the women. The women selected leadership for life. I'm not sure we'd be in a situation if women selected our leadership. You know, it was 50 too. They elected 50 chiefs, right? And so you can see the reference to the American system at some level, except if the Electoral College was even women, I thought that might be interesting. But, you know, the country's so young, you know, and I come from a culture that's at least 12,000 years old. And, and they figured out how to live peacefully, coexisting and they just took what they wanted, but they just can't let go of the paternalism, you know. And that's, it's just so frustrating for someone who knows better, you know. And we're just taught that being Haudenosaunee, you know, we understand that, so we always feel very sovereign, but they wouldn't even accept us to play lacrosse. You know, we couldn't even get our lacrosse team in there. Being a sovereign nation, we invented the game, and they won't let us play. You know, it was a medicine game. It wasn't just a game. There's a great story I executed in the theater when I was younger actor. I played Pontiac, you know, the Odawa leader. And the story goes, you know, de-troit, where Detroit, right? It was a French holding, and Odawa people, you know, that was their territory. So they played lacrosse like just hundreds of warriors played lacrosse all the way up to the fort, and then they threw the ball into the fort, and then they went in and invaded it and took it back over. You know, it's like 1763 or something. You know, the Pontiac uprising. I played that character on the stage. It was just a great moment in my theatrical career. Wonderful.
Leah Lemm: So I believe I see that you're working on some other film projects.
Gary Farmer: Yeah, I just finished. They just bought a couple of songs of mine. Actually, the film called Patient.
Leah Lemm: Patient. And who's that with?
Gary Farmer: Sarah Podemski, who was the Bear's mom in Rez Dogs. Yeah, it's a really interesting film. That was interesting. But then I did another film with Maria. She's a well-known filmmaker and screenwriter out of Vancouver, and we shot this amazing film called Tombs. They shot some in Los Angeles. I think we finished that up probably before the end of the year out there in the middle of British Columbia.
Leah Lemm: Well, what I'm looking at in front of my face here is Ghost Lake. Oh, that's the one I was thinking about when I when I brought up projects.
Gary Farmer: Yeah, that's supposed to happen. It's on my schedule to do, but I'm going to do this feature film very shortly with a filmmaker I've done like four films with. He's such a solid filmmaker. I just love working with him. It's An Enemy of the People. You would think like it's a common enemy or something, right? But it's such a reflection on our society right now. This film in kind of a film noir, 50s, film noir form. So I'm really excited to do this film. It's a novel by Dashiell Hammett called Red Harvest. It was published some years ago. But it's also not just from this book, but the authors also take from Ibsen, who was one of my favorite playwrights from history and theater.
Leah Lemm: You're listening to Native Lights, where Indigenous voices shine. Native Lights is produced by Minnesota Native News and AMPERS, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Today we're speaking with Gary Farmer, Indigenous musician, Indigenous actor. He's from the Cayuga nation and has a long career in movies and TV, and he's had his band Gary Farmer & the Troublemakers for a couple decades now. He's also a storyteller, musician and a great voice, you know, speaking out for authentic Indigenous representation. And he's currently spending some time in Minnesota, making appearances and working. So I'm really happy he took some time out of his schedule to talk to Native Lights. So what I see here in my notes, then Patient, Tomb, and then I have Ghost Lake and An Enemy of the People, as recent projects and projects, upcoming projects. So I'm getting tired just hearing how many projects you're working on. So that you must be a pretty energetic person.
Gary Farmer: I just suffered a life changing disease. So as the actor, I never thought that, first off, I never thought I'd live this long. So I retired early. So I've been living off of my retirement with my union as an actor for like 20 years, right? So I pretty well burned up my retirement, so I gotta work till the cows come home, you know? And that's okay, because I love my work. I love what I do, and as long as I'm able to execute still, I'm able to carry on.
Leah Lemm: Wow. So you got your music? You've got these on screen roles.
Gary Farmer: Yeah, a lot of them are just appearances, too, really, like one or two or three days work, yeah, but the movie I'm going to do is, you know, a serious commitment, you know, I'm in the film a lot. I just love that challenge, you know, and play a character that is not normally me, right?
Leah Lemm: Well, let me just ask a quick wrap up question. Then, for a young person, young Indigenous person watching your work, listening to this conversation right now, somebody who's still trying to figure out their path, what would you want them to know about staying the course and being creative?
Gary Farmer: I can only say what I did. You know, I figured it out for me. You know, I had a really interesting childhood, and grew up in an urban region in Buffalo, New York, when they started bussing the black kids to the white neighborhood. And my family didn't necessarily live in an Indian neighborhood. There was one in Buffalo, but we lived more, you know, middle class, I guess you could say, and so I was the Indian with all the violence against black and white, and I played ball with the blacks and lived in the white community, but we had Indian community there within that urban thing too. So in my career, I've used all that experience as a child, as a youth, as an adult, I could sit in a mall and watch people for hours, because that's what I do. I study human nature and then just re-execute or find moments. But also in the training, I went deep into the theatrical training, especially with the work and I did in clown, which was a mix of kind of Native American Medicine Wheel concepts with color and direction. And also the French clown, you know, the European clown. We brought those together experimental way, and it was like magic. And I was telling a group of students yesterday, I was doing a thing for University of New Mexico for students in film, just experiencing that. It really opened my young life. The theater just opened me to the world. I would have been whatever, you know, I would I was in photography. I would have been something creative. But once I discovered the power of storytelling and how, if I can make an audience laugh or cry, I can make them think that's what we need. You mean, we need thinking adults now, you know, and they have dumbed us down, you know, they strip education, and they're trying to make us less sophisticated than we really are and expressive. And that's why I think it's so valuable for young people to consider an art avenue, because sometimes you can speak more, and that's where the decision came for me, because I grew up in gangland, all my gang members became cops, right? Like that. The gang, you know, you had the gun illegitimately. Now you got it legitimately, you know. So, you know, I understand cop culture. Actually studied to be a cop, but then Attica happened, and I saw that, what am I doing, you know, am I going to work in the spoke, or am I going to work outside the spoke? And as a young person, you know, maybe my third year, at the end of my third-year university, I just went home and changed directions. So I was lucky that I had the time, and that's what kind of college is for. Really, it's just time for you to figure out where you're going to make the move, you know, or how you're going to make it now, a lot of our people don't even get that far to those opportunities. You know, we're dealing with different situations, and that's been part of my work too, is trying to uncover methods of helping people understand the addictions that our nation faces. You know, you spend a career trying to help that way. So I didn't get into it to be like a movie star or nothing. I got it in to make a difference. And it worked out to see all the young people now taking that responsibility and just flying that's why I think the theater is we should start training our young ones to story tell so that they can they see stuff. I know as a child, I saw stuff I saw stuff that I shouldn't see as a child, and it's not to turn back on our people or nothing, but those kinds of situations create dramatic situations to be explored and understood, and why is it like that? And so we get to discuss in depth when you're actually developing work that is hugely dramatic, in this case, the subject matter, but at the same time, when I'm early in my career, we found a way to as well keep them laughing as we uncover this darkness, maybe, and that's what you learn, to kind of uncover a story for a television episode or a theatrical play on a main stage or a small stage at home on the rez, you know, because we need to inspire our people that way to think, and the theater is the way to do it.
[Music: Native Lights Theme]
Leah Lemm: All right, that was actor, musician Gary Farmer. Just a really lovely conversation. I really liked what Gary Farmer talked about, encouraging young people to embrace their creativity, to learn how to express themselves. I can see that being a really pivotal moment in my life as a child. So chi-miigwech, Gary Farmer. Gary Farmer is from the Cayuga Nation, actor, musician, long career in movies and music. I really appreciate you taking time to chat with me. I'm Leah Lemm. Miigwech for listening. Giga-waabamin. You're listening to Native Lights, where Indigenous voices shine. Native Lights is produced by Minnesota Native News and AMPERS with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.