Actor Graham Greene has died

Graham Greene died yesterday. Greene was a remarkable and iconic Oneida/Canadian actor. He is one of the most recognizable Indigenous actors in our country and a cultural treasure. He became instantly famous for his role in Dances With Wolves for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. The first film I remember seeing him in was the excellent comedy Powwow Highway and maybe my favourite was his role as Arthur in the little-known 1991 Canadian thriller-horror Clearcut.

Clearcut was truly a film of its time, and captured the frustration of the struggle to protect Indigenous rights and territories from rapacious resource companies. All over Canada at the time, from the woods of New Brunswick, to the Pines in Oka, to Temagami, to Clayquot Sound, this issue defined a moment in Indigenous-Crown relations that changed everything. The film captures and distills the main characters in that moment in history into a plot where everything is, well, pretty clear cut. Greene plays an Indigenous environmental activist who has lost his patience with logging companies that are clear cutting in his territory. He kidnaps a company CEO and subjects him to the same kind of treatment that trees are subjected to, including a gruesome scene where he peels the skin from the leg of his victim. His performance left a deep impression on me and I’ve been an admirer of his work ever since.

In 2007 he made his Stratford festival debut as Shylock in Merchant of Venice and I always thought it was fascinating that he had played two roles, 25 years apart, in which, literally, a pound of flesh was involved.