ADAM BEACH NEVER IDLE
Adam Beach, though angry at aboriginal treatment, is sure change will come
The busy actor weighs in on
his career, his life and the issues confronting Canada’s
First Peoples.
One the most important roles in Adam Beach’s acting career was as the Navajo police investigator Jim Chee.
Beach starred as Chee in three made-for-television movies based on the mysteries written by Tony Hillerman.
Chee is much like Beach. The detective was rooted in his traditional Navajo culture as a medicine man and yet he still had to live and work and succeed by the book in the broader society as a police officer.
Beach, too, is very much a traditionalist. He is steeped in Anishnaabe culture. He has conducted a vision quest. He has pulled a pipe out of the pipestone in the traditional way. He carries the spirit name Leading Bear Man, which was given to him during a ceremony by an elder. He is a member of the bear clan of the Saulteaux nation. In fact if you look at Beach’s twitter feed you will see him standing in front of the picture of a bear.
“I feel I will always have that spirit bear with me, so I will always feel protected,” he said in an interview.
With that spiritual support he has succeeded as not many do as an actor earning roles in Hollywood films and in major network television series such as Law and Order Special Victim’s Unit.
At age 40, Adam Beach has already written an improbable life’s story.
He was born on the Dog Creek reserve two hours north of Winnipeg. Tragically, he was orphaned early on. His mother Sally was killed by a drunk driver and his father Dennis drowned a few months later.
Blanketed by such sorrow, he nevertheless survived, with the help of traditional teachers in Winnipeg who taught him about self-respect. At 16, he had an epiphany that set him on the road to success as an actor in film and on television and away from a tough life as a gang member in the city.
Today he stars in a CBC-TV dramatic series Arctic Air and he continues his movie career with films in various stages of production in Ottawa and in Sudbury. He is also an ambassador of sorts for the Northwest Territories during Winterlude. The territorial government is hosting NWT Days, featuring the music and culture of the north, in Ottawa at the Convention Centre in affiliation with the start of the annual Winterlude Festival this weekend.
His role in Arctic Air too has a bigger significance: “Here was ... a character that was providing a different perspective of what people see in the media of native people. He’s a businessman returning home, saving lives being a leader, being a hero. This character would go (into native communities) and for one day someone sitting in a reserve thinking about suicide would look at Adam Beach playing Bobby Martin and say I will wait next week to watch this character.” The series is up for renewal in the spring.
Not that everything is perfect for Beach. Sporting a goatee and a Senators toque and wearing a black leather jacket and jeans, he is not as big as he seems on the TV screen. His early life was a complicated mixture of tragedy and sexual abuse and abandonment, he says, and he is affected by it still. He says he is in therapy trying to deal his ghosts.
“You come into a place where you have to check yourself in and realize what is going on.”
He also is trying to reconnect with his older children. The two of them live in the Ottawa area and are now in their teenage years. He says he wants to be more there for them, even buying the older son a 1981 Camaro.
Finally he wants to give back to his community in Dog Creek, where he is building a home, and more broadly he is dreaming about starting a film school with branches in various Canadian cities including, he says, in Ottawa.
And then there is Idle No More. Safe to say Adam Beach supports the movement. During an interview inside the Château Laurier hotel, he talked about witnessing question period and watching politicians talk past each other about Canada’s First Peoples, and the anger peeks out.
“Today I had a good hour to watch the House of Commons deal with the issues of aboriginal Canadians and how they are going to move forward in creating a better structure that is going to propel a generation of communities to move forward. And one person would talk about how bad the conditions are and how difficult it is to apply certain strategies to these communities that are in a really bad position.
“And then you would have other people politely just saying we, as this group in government, have done more than any people in government and you should be happy and satisfied. And I’m like asking what is anybody doing right now to help propel anything?
“All they are after is how we get that land that the Indians have by using our power to take away our rights. You can’t propel a nation to move forward if all you are doing is taking something from them.”
He’s not letting aboriginal leadership off the hook. “I think we should be critical of every leadership.”
Despite this evident bitterness at the treatment of aboriginal people, Beach says he is willing to be patient for change he is sure will come.
“We’re not going anywhere. We are never going to give up our sovereignty. We will always advance and ... we will always rise above any conflict.”