'Yellowstone' actor brings mission of American Indian culture to MidSouth Nostalgia Fest

A celebration of classic and vintage cinema and television, the MidSouth Nostalgia Festival — which returns Thursday through Saturday to the Whispering Woods Hotel & Conference Center in Olive Branch — traces its origins to a 1972 gathering at the original Peabody hotel of a group that called itself the Western Film Collectors Association.

As its name indicates, the group's focus was on the definitively American genre known as the Western, which from the earliest days of silent cinema has examined the often violent expansion of the United States and the vexed concept of American identity through tales of rugged individualism, vigilante justice, outlaw bravado, the "taming" of the frontier, and "white man"-meets-"red man" conflict, set among the cacti, canyons and O.K. Corrals of the so-called Old West.

In the half century that has followed its 1972 origin, the convention — known for most of its history as the Memphis Film Festival — has expanded its reach to encompass horror, science fiction, crime, comedy and other staple genres of the Turner Classic Movies and MeTV channels. Even so, the emphasis remains on Westerns, and the festival's most popular celebrity guests have been actors who favored spurs and gunbelts over spacesuits and fedoras, including Lash LaRue, Tex Ritter, Clint Walker and Clayton "The Lone Ranger" Moore, to name a few.

That's a lot of cowboys. The other half of the equation, however, has been less well-represented.

Westerns used to be described as stories of "cowboys and Indians," but few Native American or American Indian celebrity guests have made it to the festival. That absence was more Hollywood's decision than the festival's, however.

Although "Indian" characters are central to many Westerns, studios rarely hired Native Americans for those roles. In a tradition that continued until as recently as 2013, when Johnny Depp was cast as Tonto in a remake of "The Lone Ranger," key American Indian parts in movies and on television have been taken mostly by such non-Native actors as Rock Hudson ("Winchester '73"), Burt Lancaster ("Apache"), Victor Mature ("Chief Crazy Horse"), Ed Ames ("Mingo" on TV's "Daniel Boone"), "Iron Eyes" Cody (the famous "crying Indian" of the anti-pollution TV spots was actually Italian), and even Audrey Hepburn ("The Unforgiven") and Elvis Presley (he was a "half-breed" in "Flaming Star").

"It goes to show how Hollywood made the choice to present us," says Mo Brings Plenty, an Oglala Lakota American Indian who for five seasons has been a recurring character on the popular Paramount Network series "Yellowstone." "The system has failed to recognize our true existence."

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Brings Plenty, 53, fights for that recognition, both on and off screen. He'll get a chance to do it in the Memphis area this week when he makes his MidSouth Nostalgia Festival debut alongside such other celebrity guests as the husband-and-wife team of Robert Fuller ("Wagon Train," "Emergency!") and Jennifer Savidge ("St. Elsewhere"); Buck Taylor ("Gunsmoke"); Patrick Wayne (the actor son of John Wayne); and "CHiPs" stars Erik Estrada, Larry Wilcox and Robert Pine, in a rare reunion.

Like the other festival "stars," Brings Plenty will sign autographs in the "dealer's room" (which will be filled with movie and TV memorabilia for sale); swap stories in the meeting room (the festival's question-and-answer panels may be its most poplar feature); and tell anecdotes in the screening rooms (one of the films to be shown is "The Cherokee Word for Water," a fact-based 2013 drama in which Brings Plenty plays Charlie Soap, husband of Cherokee activist Wilma Mankiller). But all the while, he'll also be sharing "education," he said.

"I consider myself an educator," said Brings Plenty (billed more formally as "Moses Brings Plenty" earlier in his career). "If you look at the lack of education about our existence and the tribes that are still in existence today, society doesn’t know about us. That’s why film and television are important. What better way to educate? Because most of society gets what it knows from film and television, and however a tribe is presented in a program is how the viewer will think of that tribe.”

Taking a cue from such American Indian predecessors as Will Sampson, a Muscogee (he was "Chief" in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"), Graham Greene, an Oneida ("Dances with Wolves"), and recent Honorary Academy Award-winner Wes Studi, a Cherokee ("The Last of the Mohicans"), Brings Plenty — who was born on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota — said he is motivated by a desire to bring an end to the disrespectful and insensitive lack of authentic American Indian representation in productions with Native characters.

Said Brings Plenty: "When I asked a lot of the younger generation of people why they aren't proud of their true identity, the number one answer that kept coming back was, 'We don't see ourselves on TV.' It took me a while to understand that answer. They were saying, 'Why should we be what we are created to be when society does not want or accept us?' When they saw American Indians on TV, what they saw was fake. Their identity was not truly represented, their culture was not represented, and most definitely their language was not represented. That was the driving force that led me to get into acting."

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As an actor, he said, he works to make certain that the presentation of American Indian culture — hair, dress, customs and so on — is authentic to whatever tribe is being represented, even if the circumstances of the story are outlandish. For example, Brings Plenty said the depiction of the American Indian characters he portrayed in "Cowboys vs. Aliens" and "Jurassic World Dominion" are as accurate as possible, despite the implausibility of the sci-fi contexts.

He said filmmakers and collaborators — including "Yellowstone" star Kevin Costner and series co-creator Taylor Sheridan — appreciate this level of truthfulness. In fact, Sheridan enlisted Brings Plenty to be his behind-the-scenes "American Indian Affairs Coordinator" for not just "Yellowstone" but its spin-off prequels, "1883," with Tim McGraw, and "1923," with Harrison Ford. As the Salt Lake Tribune — a newspaper in Utah, where much of the Costner show is filmed — reported in a headline: "'Yellowstone' breaks the mold with strong Native American characters."

"We're involved in every department," Brings Plenty said. "Set, wardrobe, the hair and makeup... It's inspirational for a lot of the tribes involved, but it's also heartbreaking," because some of the "knowledge" of historic culture has been lost or erased as the tribes were forced from their native lands.

He said most U.S. citizens don't appreciate the scope of American Indian art and culture. "Hollywood tried to put us all into one bowl," Brings Plenty said. "But if you look at the many nations and many tribes in the country, our languages are different, our day-to-day lives, our cultural way of prayer, and so on and so forth.

"We've always had diversity in this country," he said. "Even pre-1492."

MidSouth Nostalgia Festival 2023

June 8-10, Whispering Woods Hotel & Conference Center, 7300 Hacks Cross Road, Olive Branch

Film and television-episode screenings; meet-the-stars autograph sessions; panel discussions; memorabilia dealers; and more.

Admission: $80 for three days. $30 for just Thursday or Friday; $20 for Saturday.

For a full list of celebrity guests and other information, visit midsouthnostalgiafestival.com.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: 'Yellowstone' actor Mo Brings Plenty part of MidSouth Nostalgia Fest