AN INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT OWENS GREYGRASS 
 

Robert Owens Greygrass (ROG) is a storyteller, performance artist, and playwright. He is a "breed" as he sometimes calls himself, part Lakota (i.e., Sioux), and part French and Irish. 

A review of his most recent one-man performance piece, Ghostlands of an Urban NDN, appears in this October issue of Cinexxus under "Niche Films". Robert has written another one-man show, Walking on Turtle Island. 

This interview took place Saturday, September 15, 2007, in the early afternoon in the upper courtyard at the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles. The interviewer is Neil Flowers. 

 

 

 

 
Cinexxus: So what's up with "Ghostlands" these days? 

Robert: We are going to produce it again here in LA in late winter or early spring. I was talking with the manager of a theater on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood called The Elephant. We hope to do it there. Hanay Geigomah may produce. 

C: Small world. Hanay and I have been playing phone tag. We're trying to get together for lunch.. 

ROG: No kidding? 

C: Yup. But "Ghostlands." Can you tell us how it came into being? 

ROG: It came on its own. Just like that. I was driving around Eugene, Oregon, with a friend of mine, an Indian woman. We were in a depressed area of town, talking about how we could reconcile our Nature-based Native religion with barbed wire, streetlights, and concrete. Suddenly, in my mind, not necessarily in a vision, I saw an Eagle Staff in all that paved and broken desolation, standing alone under a street light, and I saw that world as a ghostland. I went home, started writing it down, and it just spewed out. 

C: How long did it take? 

ROG: A couple of weeks for a good, first draft. I kept working at it, polishing, developing the character of Big Nose. 

C: When was this and when did you first perform it before an audience? 

ROG: The first draft was in done November 2002. The first public performance was at NuWandart gallery in Ashland, Oregon, in May 2003. We packed the house and that was just a staged reading. John Cole, who teaches at Rogue Community College in Medford [Oregon], produced and directed the production. 

C: How'd it go? 

ROG: Terrific. We had excellent, useful feedback. 

C: Like? 

ROG: Well, for example, two older, white-haired, White guys got into a big argument about whether it needed more humor or not. The one guy who thought it needed more humor was challenged by the other guy who said things like, "Have you ever been on a reservation and seen the poverty and despair?" 

C: What did you think about the feedback? 

ROG: Actually, I thought that the guy who wanted more humor was correct. I was thinking that way anyway. As I did the reading I could see there were places for more jokes, sections that I could expand. I wanted to bring as much humor into it as possible. 

C: Was "Ghostlands" a breakthrough? 

ROG: Definitely. I had written Walking on Turtle Island before, but "Ghostlands" broke through for me in terms of style and, subsequently, performance. 

C: How so? 

ROG: I was writing more for humor in "Ghostlands," which was part of the reason that I agreed with the guy at the Ashland performance who was thinking that way. I consciously wrote some of the script in a stand-up comedy style. And some of it in storytelling style, a sort of raconteur style. "Ghostlands" is made that way. And, of course, it's my style, so I interpret it that way when I perform. 

C: It's obvious that "Ghostlands" is First Nations from the content, but do you see this in the style? 

ROG: I think the entire piece is an inseparable synthesis of elements from both Native American and Euro-American influences. Being and living as a multi-ethnic person, I believe it is a conversation we need to have. There are so many people born in this day and age with mixed heritage that there needs to be more voices about that. 

C: You're partly German and partly Lakota, right? 

ROG (Laughing): No! I made that up and threw it into "Ghostlands" in order to show off my German accent! I'm actually Lakota, French, and Irish. I pull into my work whatever I have experienced, and whatever is floating around in my head at the moment and seems right to use. I wanted to work in some jokes about Freud—the mother thing—so I mimicked him in the German accent, and then I created the character as partly German. 

C: Let me change direction here. Can you give us a little background about yourself? Weren't you in recovery for many years? What did you use and when did you start? 

ROG: I started at 13 and used alcohol, meth, cocaine, pot, and I was a marijuana grower so I sold it too. 

C: Really? 13? That's pretty serious. 

ROG: I don't ingest anything anymore. Things change. Sometimes it's painful to have to answer to my kids for those days. But I'm done with all that. I've been in recovery 25 years. I don't have any angst about those days in terms of having grown marijuana. Its better if people smoke pot than drink alcohol. And I decided as a Sundancer I wouldn't use anything anymore.

C: The marijuana laws are insane. Alcohol is so much more dangerous and destroys so many more lives than pot. The laws waste tax money and police resources, and create disrespect for the law. The war on drugs is a flop. Pot should be legalized. The government treats us like children. But to me, now, my health is so important. I don't jeopardize it with anything. Let's change direction again. 

ROG: Yeah good. 

C: As you know, Canada has a First Nations television station [the Aboriginal Television Network] and yet Canada is a very tiny country, having a population smaller than California. Also, many of the finest Native actors, such as Adam Beach, Tantoo Cardinal, Gary Farmer, Graham Greene, Eric Schweig, August Schellenberg are Canadian.... 

ROG: It is surprising how many actors are Canadian. Many names and faces come to mind. But the question is? 

C: How do you see the prospects of Native Americans in the U.S.? We mentioned, Hanay Geiogomah. An essay he wrote recently lambastes the HBO version of "Bury My Heart," and adds that Indians should stop trying to make it in Hollywood and instead write, produce, direct and distribute their own films, come what may. 

ROG: I've been successful on my own performing live as a storyteller, actor, writer. But I don't know if Native Americans in the U.S. are cohesive enough as a community to make this happen here. There is quite a bit of talk about it, but nothing big has happened so far. 

C: A friend of mine, a Navajo, says that the real problem of lack of cohesion stems from raging egos in the Indian community and a multiplicity of agendas. 

ROG: Sometimes I think that there just aren't enough of us who know what to say and how to bring forward a powerful, professional, well produced product that anyone will want to distribute and anyone will want to watch. That's a real challenge. It costs real money to make films. It's a business. The money has to be recouped in distribution. 

C: Did Smoke Signals do it? 

ROG: Yes. It has a good story that happens to be Native American and also has excellent production values. Some Native people trashed Sherman Alexie for selling out, but I don't agree. Sherman and Chris [Chris Eyre, the director] set out to make a film that had Hollywood-level production values so the film would find distribution and at the same tell an Indian story. They did. I don't see the problem.

      One question that keeps coming up about Indian films is, "Is this story Indian enough?" Part of the problem, more than anything else I think, is identifying the quality of Indianness in yourself in the modern world. There are so many regions, tribes, and geographies—some of whom have managed to retain a great deal of the old ways, and some who haven't been so lucky—that the answer is bound to vary.

      We drive cars, watch TV, go to universities, become lawyers and doctors, go to movies and make movies. We've embraced all these aspects of Euro-American culture. Who are we, now that we've done this? We aren't hunting buffalo right now. No one else is either. At the same time, we have tremendous pride, and rightly so, in our traditions.

      I'm a Sun Dancer, and I live in a certain way that is as Lakota as possible. At the same time, I'm a theatre performance artist in the mainstream world. 

C: You're postmodern incarnate!

ROG (Laughs): And because I am of mixed blood, I can play a variety of roles, Indian and other ethnicities, which full-blooded Indians cannot. This is a touchy subject, but it's reality. 

C: In this vein, in "Ghostlands" you refer to yourself as a "breed," a highly charged word with a cluster of negative associations, which I would say come mostly from old Hollywood Westerns in which "half-breeds" were almost always depicted negatively. Obviously, you use this word consciously. For what purpose? 

ROG: I use it specifically for the charge it has. Like Black people use the N-word. 

C: Well, it seems to me that you turn the word right around and give it a positive meaning. 

ROG: I hope so, but not so much positive as simply matter-of-fact, in the context of the show. It's who I am. 

C: "Ghostlands" is so urban, whereas Walking on Turtle Island is pastoral. Do you have a preference for your pieces? 

ROG: I prefer "Ghostlands." For me it's more therapeutic to perform. I have noticed over the years that Whites tend to prefer "Turtle Island," while Indians tend to prefer "Ghostlands." 

C: Do you know why that is? 

ROG: Well, as you mentioned, "Turtle Island" is more pastoral, more of the "Noble Savage" idea. It presents more of the Indian spirituality that White people like, and like to hear. "Ghostlands" is contemporary; it shows more how Indians nowadays live and talk. Urban Indians, at least. 

C: Are we circling back to Hanay and his take on "Bury My Heart"? 

ROG: We can't ignore, trivialize, or forget the past. Indians did live a pastoral life, and there are many good aspects to it. And it looks good on camera. I have a friend who right now is involved in shooting Shadowheart, an historical piece about Indians. Indians are glad to have these jobs, sure, but we're someone else now, too. We've moved on from bows and arrows and living exclusively in tipis or longhouses. 

C: So you think Hanay's criticisms of the "Bury My Heart" are justified? 

ROG: Well, it is just another Indian movie about Indians in the past. I think that finally the film does more harm than good because it perpetuates in the mainstream mind certain stereotypes of Indians. That Indians are only in the past. Or the definition of what it means to be an Indian resides only in the past. The film also infers that Indians participated in their own destruction. 

C: Didn't they? How about Indian scouts who rode with the U.S. Cavalry? How about Indians who were reservation police? Some of those Indians killed Sitting Bull, to take a famous example. 

ROG: Well, yes, there is truth in that, too, and what you say about Sitting Bull's killers is undeniable. And there were always scouts and warriors who fought with the blue coats against other tribes. Still, you gotta remember that the circumstances people find themselves in are often cruel and difficult. Take Crazy Horse. The Indians who were at Fort Robinson had their food cut off by the U.S. Army. These people were told that unless they persuaded Crazy Horse to come in their food supply would be cut off and they would starve to death. Knowing what the U.S. Army was capable of, it's no wonder that the people wanted Crazy Horse to surrender. And he was caught in the position of having to surrender or else watch his people starve. When he came in, he was assassinated. And it is a hard question to answer from 2007 looking back: What would YOU have done? Divide and conquer is an old method of conquest that was played out then and is still played out today. 

C: Speaking of contemporary realities, as we were, I am about to run out of parking meter time. So let me ask you a few quick questions. 

ROG: OK. 

C: What are you working on now? 

ROG: A book and a teleplay. 

C: What's the book about? 

ROG: It's called You Gotta Ask the Right Questions, and it's a kind of self-help, inspirational book based somewhat on personal narratives. It's an extension of "Ghostlands," in a way—in its ideas. 

C: Like? 

ROG: Spirituality. God. Family dysfunction. 

C: Is God alive? 

ROG: I don't like the word "God." I don't think it covers it. In Lakota, we say, Wakan Tanka, which, as much as it can be translated, means, Sacred Greatness. It means the whole process in which we are involved, and every living thing is involved, the whole universe, life, death, everything. God is not a separate existential reality. 

C: So we're in and of the Sacred Greatness, at every moment, part of it and it part of us? 

ROG: Exactly. And we just need to put our attention on it, open our consciousness so that we become more aware of it. That's the work! 

C: What's the teleplay about? 

ROG: It's a pilot for a one-hour episodic. I don't want to talk too much about it. You know how ideas can be "borrowed". So I can't tell you anymore than that. 

C: Fair enough. Now I must get out of here before I get one of those expensive LA parking tickets. But last thing: I'd love to see "Ghostlands" filmed. 

ROG: Me too! 

C: It's such a great piece of work. Right up there with Swimming to Cambodia, and in my opinion more relevant right now. So any prospects? 

ROG: Not yet. If there is anybody out there interested in financing it, please get in touch with me. We're very willing to talk. As I said, we'll be running "Ghostlands" again in late winter or early spring, hopefully at The Elephant, so anyone who might want to invest will have an opportunity to see it soon. 

C: I really hope this happens, and Cinexxus will run a notice when "Ghostlands" goes up again. Anything else you want? 

ROG: I want a big house for all my kids and grandkids, and a small house beside it where I live and write. 

C: Me too! We'll put a prayer out for you. 

ROG: Hecetuwelo! (That's the way it is!] 
 

Robert Owens Greygrass can be reached through his e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Visit his Web site, [greygrass.org].