Catching up with Michael Horse

Page 19

Master of Ceremonies Michael Horse is filling an interlude during the Miss Indian World Pageant held April 27 to 29 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Hollywood actor tells the crowd he did some work up in Canada on a show called North of 60.

"Ever heard of it?" he asks.

Loud hoots and hollers.

"Great show, isn't it? I love Canada. But their frybread ... I sat down for some up there. 'Where's the fry bread?' I asked. 'Right there on the table,' they told me. 'There? That? That's not fry bread. Where I come from, we'd call that doughnut holes!'"

More hoots and hollers.

Horse, 50, doesn't miss a beat through the entire show. With wife and co-host Sandra Horse managing the odd dig at her famous husband's expense ("Michael would win the Mr. Indian Fry bread contest, hands down"), they keep the show rolling.

At his booth at the Indian Traders Market at the Gathering of Nations powwow where I interviewed him the next day, we we're constantly interrupted as people stopped by to chat, shake his hand or get his autograph. Half the powwow seemed to know him, and the other half wanted to.

"I did play Tonto once," he answers a young admirer. "When they told me about the part, I said 'no, no, no.' But then they said, 'Michael, it pays $50,000.' 'Uhhh, OK. Yeah, I'll do it, but the first time I hear the words faithful companion, I'm out of here!'"

Horse later tells me, "I tried to play the part well, to be real, to play the role without stereotypes. That film was done way back in the '80s. It wasn't a very good movie."

Horse praises North of 60 for being the first series about Indians that was genuine.

"What happened on that show could be happening on any reserve. I really enjoyed being directed by Gil Cardinal. He's Indian. I didn't have to keep stopping and explaining things.

"Everyone gets the re-runs here on satellite," he adds. "They love it. The States doesn't have anything like it. Here, it's just stereotype - Geronimo and the dysfunctional family."

Horse predicts all this will change with the arrival of digital films.

"I've been in on a few digital films. You can make good productions for under $30,000. That's going to put film-making back into the hands of the artists."

The new genre will also be more accessible.

"The films can be beamed down from satellites to theatres. No reels have to be delivered. And the sound and picture are better!"

Currently, Horse acts in Roswell - a television series with a space alien theme. He's also working with his wife to produce a children's book featuring his clever ledger art, which surrounds us in his booth. Colorful, framed folk art line drawings of Indians doing everything - riding horses, waiting for trains, dancing with rattles - is painted on old, lined pages torn from Indian Agency ledgers, complete with inked columns of names and numbers in spidery handwriting.

Beneath the drawings, Horse's silverwork sparkles inside glass display cases. A pair of extraordinary horse-shaped earrings catch my eye. I'm not the only one to admire them. Mitzi Tolino, outgoing Miss Indian World 1999, is wearing the same pair, or ones like it, when I interview her the next day.

Horse says he began his artistic career as a silversmith.

"In southern Arizona, my mom, aunts and uncles all do it. I use family tools that are 50 years old. When I was little, we moved to the San Fernando Valley in California. I grew up around painters, potters and jewelers. It wasn't some big return to my culture. We've always done it. It was a very rich, multi-cultural upbringing. I'm fortunate to have grown up with ties to my culture - the ceremonies, the arts, the dances."

Horse is from the Pascua Yaqui Reservation, south of Tucson, Arizona, and speaks three languages - Cheyenne, Lakota and Mescalero. I add linguistics to the tally of this man's many talents, and then a passerby asks him about his music.

"Oh, I've played the fiddle for years - mostly bluegrass and country blues. I love music. Not just Idigenous music. All kinds."

Turns out the man is also good with troubled teenage gang members. His street-wise, "seen-it-all" portrayal of a counsellor who comes to start a healing centre in North of 60's Lynx River is not far from real life.

"I'm in Los Angeles, where gangs started, so I work with them. It all has to do with young men wanting to be warriors, but they are misguided warriors. It's like a rite of passage.

"A while back Sandra and I went to an inner-city powwow in Los Angeles. A car pulls up and Sandra says, 'Oh, oh. Here comes a gang.' But they get out of the car, get out of their colors and they dance. It was great! It's a way for them to get back in touch with who they are, with what's real.

"What we do with the kids is kind of an outward bound approach. When we're way out there, if a kid doesn't want to participate, we're tough. 'Oh, so you don't want to look after your horse. Then you walk. Don't want to keep up with us? Then you won't eat at camp.'

"I try to find the one channel I can reach them through. If it's art, I'll say 'Oh, you like to draw? You want to draw like me?' and then we go. All we can do is talk to these kids, educate them, help them find something real to do, and love them."

Horse says a counselling program in the San Fernando Valley, where there are many gangs, was discontinued. Government intervention misses the mark when dollars are spent on huge advertising campaigns instead of programs with trained people willing to get down and work with these kids, he adds.

"Gangs have hit the Pueblos down here. Pueblos have such history. They're such loving and family-oriented Indian communities. When gangs hit the Pueblos, we're in trouble.

Working with teens, creating art, making music, acting in and producing films ... does such a fast-paced life give Horse any down time?

"Oh, I go home to the San Fernando Valley to relax. And my grandma says 'Michael, that new movie you're in. It wasn't very good.' And then she asks me whenI'm gonna work for 'that Spielberg guy.'

"Now, that kind of feedback keeps me humble. It lets me know who I am."