SAG-AFTRA

Fall / Winter 2022

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sagaftra.org | Fall/Winter 2022 | SAG-AFTRA 71 Honors the Past While Looking to the Future 'Dark Winds' & 'Reservation Dogs' Star Zahn McClarnon L akota actor Zahn McClarnon has been performing on big and small screens for decades, amassing an acting resume highlighted with major TV credits like Westworld, Longmire, Fargo and The Son. His broad and fruitful career of Native-specific roles have led him to perhaps the triple crown of acting: appearing concurrently on three series. He's starring on AMC's Dark Winds, renewed for season two, FX's Reservation Dogs, renewed for season three, and he'll be on the upcoming Disney+ Marvel Studios Echo — all of which put Native characters and stories center stage. Off-screen, McClarnon has worked with SAG-AFTRA's National Native Americans Committee for years to finally see this kind of representation take place. He has appeared in a union-sponsored video for casting directors and as part of actor roundtable discussions to promote and expand the images of Indigenous actors. With so many Native-centered projects receiving critical acclaim and audience accolades, it's a watershed moment for actors like McClarnon. SAG-AFTRA sat down with him to discuss representation and where he'd like to see Native stories headed in the future. As a young man, were you able to find images of yourself on screen? zahn: Well, Chief Dan George and Will Sampson were a couple of my heroes growing up — No. 1 was Will. Seeing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for the first time … it's still one of my all-time favorite movies. That scene with Will and Jack, [where] he hands him the piece of Juicy Fruit [gum] to me is one of the best scenes in the history of the movies. I was living in Montana at the time, right outside the reservation, and it just humanized Native characters in a way that I had never seen before. And those scenes in The Outlaw Josey Wales with Chief Dan George lying on the ground, and he says some funny things to Clint [Eastwood] about dying — those are the kinds of scenes that stuck out to me as a kid more so than watching the stereotypical tropey Natives on horses running around scalping people or always being the bad guys. Those are the kind of Natives that I was around; I have

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