Passion, pathos and Schellenberg

You see pathos, anger and passion in his blazing  brown eyes. You also boil within when he rants against the white men who want to take away his property. You can’t escape from Lakota Chief Sitting Bull’s penetrating gaze. And you wonder how the actor manages to hold you in the palm of his hands.

August Schellenberg, like his reticent character, isn’t given too much talking. Hearing him answer questions by phone thousands of miles across the ocean (Texas, to be exact), you imagine a man whose actions speak louder than words. And because they do, Schellenberg has made critics sit up and notice.

The actor, best known for his role as the chieftain Chomina in Black Robe, for which he won a Canadian Genie Award (the equivalent of an Oscar) and an AFI award. The Canadian actor won another AFI award for the mini-series Dreamkeeper. But his most popular movie by far is the touching Free Willy.

Schellenberg, 71, is not wanting in movies that touch the audience. A career that has spanned more than four decades has seen him swinging from theater to film and television. 

That’s why he can say with authority that “it takes 20 years of acting  experience to reach your potential.”

He had a lot of help from fellow actors along the way, for sure. Schellenberg’s list of actors he looks up to is long and prestigious. It includes Lee Marvin, Christopher Plummer, John Colicos, Vanessa Redgrave, Lisa Minelli and Kevin Spacey.  Schellenberg has worked with this veritable list of who’s who in Hollywood.

He is careful to qualify what the list is all about, though.

“I have no role models,” Schellenberg relates. “What I have are people I respect in the industry.”

What he also has is admiration for Sitting Bull, the character he plays on HBO’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (premieres Friday, July 11, 10 p.m. on HBO Signature on SkyCable). Schellenberg, who’s playing the tortured character for the third time, says, “Sitting Bull was the last chief who turned in his rifle.  He was certainly a champion for his people. He cared for his people and he was against the concept of reservation life.”

Schellenberg would have done what his character did in the movie, winner of six Emmy awards, including  Outstanding Made for Television Movie.

“I share the love for my people and all kinds of people Sitting Bull showed. He accepted the white man and the black man into the tribe. I guess that’s the best thing to do,” muses the actor.

This love for his character showed in his performance, which earned an Emmy nomination for Schellenberg,  himself, the product of a mixed culture (he is a descendant of the Mohawk nation).

Based on Dee Brown’s seminar non-fiction best seller, the award-winning movie explores the tragic impact the US’ westward expansion had on American Indian culture, and the economic, political and social pressures behind it.

You see lust for power as beleaguered Indians — men, women and children — run for their lives.  You see a young Indian doctor torn between his treasured heritage and the American ways. The first gives him roots, the second threatens to tear those roots away from him.

Schellenberg is careful not to put political color in the movie. But it’s there — written in scene after powerful scene. It’s about a nation taking over another nation, and making sure it brings its culture to the people it seeks to subjugate. It’s all about power — and the toll  it exacts from conqueror and the conquered.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee will move you, if not to tears, at least to feel for the Indians and their family. It will make you ask questions, instead of take things sitting down.

Most of all, it will prove that although we may come from different races, one man’s problem can very well be our own.