Miniseries weaves tales of Indian tribal lore

By Mike Hughes
Gannett News Service

For two nights, ABC will make room for dreams and legends of the emotional and spiritual worlds.

"Dreamkeeper" (8 p.m. today and tomorrow) isn't the usual miniseries. It floats through the legends of many American Indian tribes.

"It was sort of refreshing that they included so many different (tribes)," says Delanna Studi, an actress with Cherokee roots. "I grew up with a lot of these stories, but I still hadn't heard them all."

Here are 10 stories, offering epic visions of romance, courage and magic. "I was amazed they hadn't really been put on television or on film before," says director Steve Barron.

That's because it's hard to weave separate stories into an overall film. ABC and producer Robert Halmi did that once with "Arabian Nights." Now they've tried again.

The film focuses on Shane (Eddie Spears), a troubled teen living on a reservation in South Dakota. To escape gang members, he agrees to drive his grandfather (August Schellenberg) to an All Nations gathering in New Mexico.

Along the way, the old man tells old stories. At times, the tales entwine with the life of Shane, who is transforming profoundly.

For Barron, this was like making 10 mini-movies. "We needed all the different looks," he says.

One story has the dreamy feel of a watercolor painting. Another has the straight-ahead action of 1,500 stampeding buffalo.

This covered immense range, geographically and emotionally. The film had 135 shooting days in Pine Ridge, Ariz., New Mexico and (mostly) Alberta, Canada. It included 2,500 American Indians, 750 horses and 95 speaking roles.

It was an ambitious plunge for ABC, which then hesitated.

The network scheduled "Dreamkeeper" for the key May ratings period. Then it pulled it, delayed it for seven months, and dumped it into a low viewership spot.

In some ways, ABC's hesitance is logical. Like any short-story collection, "Dreamkeeper" is slow to engage the viewer.

Eventually, however, it brings a rich visual and emotional blend.

"People who are outside native cultures ... will see the beauty of it," says Spears, a Lakota Sioux who grew up in South Dakota.

Schellenberg, whose roots are Mohawk and Swiss, agreed. It shows "the beauty of the people, the humanness of the people," he says.

Studi — who plays warrior woman Talks a Lot — is a classic example of someone balancing two cultures.

These days she's in the great tide of attractive young actresses in Los Angeles. She'll appear in the upcoming film "Edge Of America."

She scurries to auditions while juggling jobs as a waitress and a personal assistant.

Friends are fascinated when they learn she's of Cherokee descent and from small-town Oklahoma. "Then I'm expected to be an expert on all things Indian," she says.

She's a semi-expert, at least, with a one-woman stage show ("Kick") about American Indian culture. That reflects her girlhood in Liberty, Okla.

"My father was very traditional and my mother is German-Irish, so I had the experience of having both worlds," Studi says.

Each Columbus Day, her dad pulled her from school and told her stories.

"He really kept the culture alive in my family," Studi says.

The other powerful influence was performing. Studi was 3 when she played a Munchkin in a stage production of "The Wizard of Oz." She became a community-theater regular in nearby Fort Smith, Ark.

Then the 1992 film "The Last of the Mohicans" came to the local movie theater. Her father's cousin, Wes Studi, had a key role. "I thought, 'If Uncle Wes can do it, I can do it, too.' "

Wes Studi surprised her with an encouraging phone call. After high school, Delanna made the huge cultural leap to Los Angeles.

"In a small town I was always the weird one with the strange ideas," she says. "In Los Angeles, I'm not weird at all."