Speak/Sing Native™ Artist Archive
Gary Farmer
Cayuga Nation/Wolf Clan
Gary Farmer is a film and television character actor and a musician from the Cayuga Nation, Wolf Clan.
According to IMBD, his film/TV credits include 137 as an actor, 4 as a director, 4 soundtracks and 15 appearing as himself or as narrator.
His band, Gary Farmer and the Troublemakers, include a 2010 appearance at the Waterfront Blues Festival in Portland, Oregon among their credits (see below).
Farmer was born on the Six Nations Reserve in Ohsweken, Ontario, into the Cayuga Nation and Wolf Clan of the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois Confederacy.
He grew up in Buffalo, New York, where his father worked as a crane operator.
Farmer's first acting role was in the 1976 play On The Rim of a Curse, about the Beothuk, a group of Indigenous people of Canada who lived on the island of Newfoundland. The Beothuk culture formed around 1500 CE. This may have been the most recent cultural manifestation of peoples who first migrated from Labrador to present-day Newfoundland around 1 CE. The ancestors of this group had three earlier cultural phases, each lasting approximately 500 years.
His first major television role was on the Canadian Broadcasting Company's Spirit Bay. He subsequently played police captain Joe Stonetree on the syndicated TV series Forever Knight, and Chief Tom in the CBC First Nations TV series The Rez. Farmer is best known for his role as spiritual Native American guide Nobody in Dead Man. Farmer reprised the role for a cameo in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.
Farmer has performed in both the film and television adaptations of Tony Hillerman's novels. He played "Cowboy" Albert Dashee (Hopi) in the 1991 film The Dark Wind, and Captain Largo (Navajo) in the television adaptations of Coyote Waits (2003) and A Thief of Time (2004).
He played Burt, a supporting character in the 2001 crime thriller The Score starring Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, Ed Norton, Angela Bassett and Paul Soles. Farmer also appeared in two episodes of the popular children's television show Big Comfy Couch as Wobbly.
Farmer played the role of Fagin in Twist, the 2003 independent adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic novel Oliver Twist, and the role of Iktome in the 2003 all-Native-American-cast TV film Dreamkeeper. Other major roles included Henry Colville, with Kris Kristofferson, in Disappearances (2006) and Jack in Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian (2013).
He recorded the audiobook version of Louise Erdrich's 2012 novel The Round House, winner of the 2012 National Book Award for Fiction.
Farmer appeared in season 1 of the Sundance TV series The Red Road in 2014.
He appeared as the recurring character Uncle Brownie in the highly-acclaimed FX series Reservation Dogs from 2021-2023, and as Dan Twelvetrees in the Syfy series Resident Alien.
He continues to act, and leads his blues band Gary Farmer and the Troublemakers.
Professional Information
Founding Director - Aboriginal Voices Radio Network. On air 2002-2016 (Wiki)
1983 - present
rock, blues
actor, musician, bandleader
harmonica, Vocals
Video
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Waterfront Blues Festival - Song 1 -
Venue: Waterfront Blues Festival
Format: Live
Duration: 2:14
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Waterfront Blues Festival - Song 8 -
Venue: Waterfront Blues Festival
Format: Live
Duration: 8:51
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With actor Gary Farmer -
Venue:
Format: Interview
Duration: 26:34
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Johnny Depp and Gary Farmer on Dead Man -
Venue:
Format: Interview
Duration: 4:09
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Dead Man Xebeche Scene -
Venue:
Format: Film Clip
Duration: 1:31
Tribal Information
Cayuga Nation/Wolf Clan
Cayuga/Haudenosaunee/Iroquois Confederacy, is from the Six Nations Reserve in Ohsweken, Ontario (Source)
.There are over 630 First Nations communities in Canada, which represent more than 50 Nations and 50 Indigenous languages. As in the United States, the Canadian Constitution is the supreme law of Canada.
Section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982 explicitly recognizes and affirms the existing Aboriginal and treaty rights of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada. Section 35 also indicates that the term “Aboriginal peoples of Canada” includes the First Nation, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada.
Further, section 25 of the Constitution Act, 1982 protects the Aboriginal and treaty rights that are recognized in section 35 and ensures that no other provision of the Charter can take away or supersede those rights.