Top 20 Wes Studi Quotes

Having watched ‘The Lone Ranger,’ I asked my dad, ‘You think we can be on TV like that guy?’ He said, ‘Probably not. You have to be 6 feet and blond to work in TV and movies.’ I said, ‘But what about that guy? Jay Silverheels?’

I think that’s every actor’s dream, actually: to play lead parts.

People talk about gangs as if they’re something new. But it really isn’t that way. The Democratic Party is a gang. The Republican Party is a gang. They’re just not in the streets anymore.

National sovereignty can only be achieved after self-sovereignty.

The western has always been, for me, the bread and butter. It’s the easiest place for an identifiable Native American to be able to work. But I do yearn to be known as an actor rather than a ‘Native American actor.’

We have a responsibility to Mother Earth to protect it as much as possible.

Irony is one of my favorite aspects of life.

In the ’70s, with movies like ‘Little Big Man,’ westerns began to have a little different flavor, and I think casting people and filmmakers began to realize, ‘Hey, maybe we can get a little more authentic in terms of who we cast here.’ That kind of opened up the gates.

I tried bull-riding… I wasn’t good at all: I don’t think I ever got eight seconds anywhere. But then, after that, I discovered acting through community theater.

At times, I’m thinking negatively, thinking that we don’t learn from our mistakes, but then I get more positive-minded. I do believe in the good of humanity.

I can be a teddy bear, but more people tend to see me as the other side of the coin, and that has to do with casting, more Iago than Hamlet. But I don’t play villains; I play people doing the right thing for the circumstances and time.

I like to be able to raise people’s consciousness, yes. And to remind that those of us involved in the receiving end of the oppression, we have a duty.

I’m Cherokee, and there were times when social expansion was something that is needed by a cultural group or a national group.

We were created to take care of, steward the land. That is mankind’s purpose on earth, to steward and take care of the land as it feeds off of it.

I feel very fortunate that I was able to be cast in roles that showed the humanity, if you will, of usually stereotypical Indian characters that made up a lot of film, like the Pawnee in ‘Dances with Wolves.’

One of the things I learned early on was the system of believing: you have to believe in what you say. The camera is the arbiter of truth; it’s the all-seeing eye that can pick out discrepancies. You can’t lie to the camera. You must believe in what you’re saying, or the audience won’t believe you.

It’s a dangerous thing to build pipelines underground.

At times, you’re welcome, depending on what’s being cast. ‘Dances with Wolves’ – they wanted authentic-looking Indians in the film, and so they got it. The same was true with ‘The Last of the Mohicans’ and ‘Geronimo.’

I came from a family that was pretty insularly Cherokee. We kept to ourselves – the white people were there, and we were here, and it was practically a segregated kind of thing.

I’m proud to have served there for 12 months with Alpha Company of the 39th Infantry.