Duane Howard (Elk Dog) shares his experiences at the Oscars

A last-minute invitation to attend the Academy Awards has proven to be the career highlight for an Indigenous actor and an Indigenous designer.
Actor Duane Howard, who portrayed Elk Dog in The Revenant, walked the red carpet Sunday night in a tuxedo by Haida designer Dorothy Grant.

Being at the Academy Awards for the first time was “amazing,” Howard told Windspeaker. “It was awesome. It was one of the best things anybody could experience.”

Dorothy Grant was excited for them both.

Photo Caption: Actor Duane Howard attended the Academy Awards in a tuxedo designed by Dorothy Grant.
(Photo: holly carinci | HollyWords Publicity Group)

“It’s a sharing of pride across all First Nations people in the United States and Canada,” she said. “For both of us to have done that, for him walking the red carpet in my outfit, for us, it was a double whammy of pride that went across like a wildfire. It just spread,” Grant said.

Movie director Alejandro González Iñárritu purchased tickets a week before the Oscars in order for Howard to attend, along with American Indigenous actors Arthur Redcloud and Forrest Goodluck, and English actor Will Poulter.
The Revenant, which earned Iñárritu the Oscar for best director and Leonardo DiCaprio the Oscar for best actor, was filmed mainly in Alberta and had a large contingent of local Indigenous actors.

When Grant found out The Revenant had been nominated for 12 awards, she approached Howard’s sister, who she has known for many years, and said she would be available to design a tuxedo for Howard.  Howard messaged Grant on Facebook with one week’s notice and Grant and her staff put in the necessary overtime hours to make Howard’s tuxedo happen.

“Haida form line design is really graphic work,” said Grant. “It’s really about how it fits on a jacket. I’m not one just to plop art on a garment…. I fill spaces in an appropriately kind of balanced way that fits on the body.”

Grant placed her accents, artwork of eagle and raven, on the lapels of the tuxedo, which she says was “just a natural place to put Haida art.” It was also a shout-out to Howard’s Nuu-chah-nulth heritage.

It’s not the first time Grant has had her work worn at the Oscars. She designed clothing for the young Twilight actors of the Quileute tribe. But this was different, she says.

“It was kind of an indescribable feeling. (Howard) was literally seconds on the screen when they panned in and they were announcing the best director. When I saw the look on his face, that’s what made me my proudest moment. It wasn’t so much about my tuxedo – maybe it was – it was the way he looked, probably the way he felt, accumulation of a lot of pride in his work. I was just a conduit to help him show better. I shared that pride with him at that moment even though I wasn’t there,” she said.

But as incredible as it was, Howard said he agreed with host Chris Rock’s comments about the Oscars being the “White People’s Choice Awards.” All 20 nominees in the best acting or supporting acting categories were white. Howard says the Oscars was not the place to talk about Indigenous rights.

“They’re not real open to anything like that, not really,” said Howard. “I ran into a few people that had their nose up. And they can be real racist, yeah, no doubt. I’ve seen that.”

For that very reason, he says, it is important to have Indigenous actors in the crowd. Howard is hoping that his presence at the awards will help open doors for other Indigenous actors.

“It’s really important. It’s going out to show the people, who run the Oscar awards … to let them know they’ve got to open these doorways for us. Ourselves and the black community have been fighting this for years,” said Howard.

The last Indigenous actor to be recognized was 26 years ago when Graham Greene was nominated for best supporting actor for his role in Dances with Wolves.

Attending the Academy Awards is one thing Howard can cross of his bucket list, as is attending a movie premiere. His next career goal is to “direct my own big feature” in the next five to 10 years.