Adam Beach stars in PBS mystery thriller

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American book author Tony Hillerman has another literary hit on his hands and it's got a Canadian connection. Hillerman, who grew up in rural Oklahoma among Pottawatomie Indians, has written Skinwalkers, a mystery novel recently premiered on PBS Television.

Canadian Adam Beach plays one of the main characters, Officer Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police. Beach is well-known to viewing audiences, having starred in recent top box-office attractions such as Windtalkers and Smoke Signals, as well as in the television programs Lonesome Dove and North of 60.

Beach says he knew even in high school in Winnipeg that he wanted to pursue acting as a career.

"My friends and I figured that drama was the only class where we could team up and be creative. It was expressive, it was inspiring and it was not locked into a regime," said the 30-year-old, speaking from a Los Angeles photo studio where a photographer was taking publicity shots. Beach now lives in Ottawa on the rare occasions his filming schedule allows him time off.

Beach described his character, Jim Chee, as a young man who is a distinguished police officer but also a medicine man in training.

"That combination makes it difficult for him, because he doesn't know how to make the transition from an authority figure to a soft-spoken medicine man," he explained. Chee is chosen to pursue a mystery killer whose method of disposing of his victims is reminiscent of a skinwalker, a Navajo with supernatural powers to change from human to animal, move with lightning speed, and to kill with unseen powers and curses.

Beach says the writers have left the significance of Aboriginal culture intact.

"Hollywood and its writers have realized that leaving the storyline as natural as possible and true to the original beliefs is the way to go," he said. "And of course Canada is way ahead of everyone else right now with giving the best point of view possible."

Beach is hoping that the increased awareness of First Nations culture, and seeing more Aboriginal actors in cultural settings will give the viewing world a broader perspective and they will begin to understand and respect Indigenous North Americans as a people.

"Over the years, Hollywood depicted us as the bad guys, or as outcasts with huge political and social problems, but that has disappeared now," he said.

Beach is teamed with Wes Studi, a Cherokee from Oklahoma, who plays the role of a seasoned older cop named Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn. Studi is known for roles in the Last of The Mohicans and Dances with Wolves, and played the title character in Geronimo: An American Legend.

The characters played by Beach and Studi are portrayed as having uniquely complementary skills as they chase their perpetrator across the desert of the American Southwest. Leaphorn has become assimilated to the urban ways of Phoenix, Santa Fe and Albuquerque, while Chee is a graduate of the FBI Academy with a sideline as a traditional Navajo healer. It's a useful skill, since the murderer has a hostility towards medicine men, including Chee.

Beach needed to speak Navajo in Skinwalkers and worked diligently with a linguist to perfect the part.

"There is absolutely no similarity to Saulteax." [Beach's ancestry]. "I had to learn the speaking parts from scratch," he said, pausing in mid-conversation to ask if his home-town Winnipeg Blue Bomber football team had made it into the final game of the year, the Grey Cup.

"Down here we don't hear much Canadian news," he said.

Beach believes that the potential for Aboriginal talent, both behind and in front of the cameras, is great.

"There are so few of us right now, and producers often hire a non-Native to fill a role because there isn't a large enough pool of authentic actors. We also need more Native writers," he said. "But it's hard to get excited about an acting career when it's so demanding. You have to be practising every day and it takes you away from yur families and from the everydy activities of life at home, which Aboriginal people put a lot of value on," he said.

"A lot of people back home are rooting for me. That's not just for me personally, but as a member of the Aboriginal community, because I represent all of us. My success is our success," Adam Beach said.

Beach hopes to initiate some projects himself, hopefully back in Canada as often as possible.

"We are starting production shortly in Winnipeg on a film about J. J. Harper which will be released in December," he said. Harper died from a gunshot fired by a Winnipeg police officer in 1988, and his death led to an inquiry into how Manitoba's Aboriginal peoples were being treated by the justice system.

Skinwalkers was funded by PBS and Carlton International and shot on location near Phoenix, Arizona. Skinwalkers premiered on local PBS on Nov. 24, but is to be rerun. Keep an eye on local listings for dates and times.