Graham Greene attends a screening of Antlers in New York on Oct. 25, 2021.
Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images
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Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images
One of the most respected Indigenous actors of his generation, Graham Greene appeared in more than 200 television shows and movies, including the 1990 blockbuster Dances With Wolves. For his role as a Lakota warrior who allies himself with a Civil War soldier played by Kevin Costner, Greene was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor.
Greene died Monday in Stratford, Ontario, of natural causes, according to a statement provided to NPR by his manager, Gerry Jordan.
In Dances With Wolves, Greene’s dialogue was in the Lakota language. But Greene was part of the Oneida Nation, born on the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve near Brantford, Ontario. Later, he told the Television Academy that learning those lines was his greatest challenge. He studied Lakota for eight hours every day, seven days a week.
“I don’t even speak my own language,” he said in that 2023 interview. “We were taught not to speak it. It’s like forgetting your heart.”
Greene found his way into acting after working as a steelworker and welder and as a roadie for rock bands. He appeared in numerous small roles in huge films, including as a convict in The Green Mile, a detective in Die Hard with a Vengeance and as a tribal chief in two films in The Twilight Saga. He was also a familiar presence on television shows and miniseries such as American Gods, The Last of Us, Tulsa King and Reservation Dogs.
Greene was also a stage actor, who performed at Canada’s prestigious Stratford Festival and at Native Earth Performing Arts, which bills itself as the country’s oldest professional Indigenous theater company.
