Best known as the voice and likeness of the title character in the 1995 animated Disney film "Pocahontas" and for being named by "People" magazine as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world, Irene Bedard is one of the most prominent and respected Native American actresses working today.
The 36-year-old was born in a suburb of Anchorage, Alaska to a full-blooded Inupiat Eskimo mother and a French Canadian/Cree Indian dad father who negotiated Native American land rights. She spent her childhood singing, talking neighborhood kids into performing "Yellow Submarine" and entertaining family and friends.
She honed her craft at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, and co-founded the Chuka Lokali theater ensemble for Native Americans in New York City.
Bedard's profile was raised in 1994 when she appeared in the live action Disney film "Squanto: A Warrior's Tale" and portrayed native American activist Mary Crow Dog in the TNT Network film "Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee," which won her a Golden Globe nomination. She can also be seen other films, such as the 1998 independent film hit "Smoke Signals."
Now living in southern California, Bedard is also an activist in her personal life and remains involved in the group she helped to find, the Guardians of Scared Lands, dedicated to raising awareness to Native issues and educationg the public about scared Indian lands. She also continues her involvement in Aboriginal rights, remaining outspoken on issues that are important to her.
Fueled by a desire to be closer to her family, Bedard, who just became a mother, joined forces with her husband, award-winning musician and film scorer Denny ("Deni") Wilson. She returned to her love of singing and formed the band Irene Bedard and Deni. Their first album, titled "Warrior of Love," is a stunning mix of techno and progressive rock.
Bedard, who is out on tour with her band promoting the new album, took time out of her busy schedule to talk to OnMilwaukee.com about her exciting new venture into the world of music, her acting career and the recent addition to her family, son Quinn Joseph.
OMC: What was it like growing up in Alaska?
Irene Bedard: Growing up in Alaska, it's like you are a tiny human being on the face of the planet. You walk out of Anchorage, and you are literally in the middle of untouched wilderness. It's huge. The sky's huge. The mountains are huge. Once you get out of Anchorage you are lucky to see another human being.
OMC: How did growing up in Anchorage inspire you to become involved in all these causes?
IB: My father was very politically involved. That set me up for having a cultural perspective of my community. It certainly happened that if you're native that you end up having political view points. There had been in the past so many human rights issues that come up. Also, you are born with a Federal ID number, so you are born into politics as it is. So we are lumped into the government with trees. I was brought up with the knowledge that I had to be involved in the community.
OMC: How did the album with your husband Deni begin?
IB: We actually did a Christmas album together. That was our first collaboration together. We wanted to start working together. My husband wrote a song about the events of September 11 for Osama bin Laden and George Bush. He asked me to write a little segment because I do a lot of prose and poetry and I write for my theatre company. I ended up writing a piece that wouldn't fit in the little space he had for me, and it ended up being the song "India and Pakistan" on the album. We enjoyed the collaboration so much that we just kept going.
OMC: What inspired you to make the transition from acting into music?
IB: I took singing lessons and was in choir in high school, and when I went to the University Of The Arts, in the theater program, I had to take voice lessons. I always incorporated a lot of singing into my characters and things that I did. I started doing movies, and now I've done 30 movies, and I haven't had the time or the inclination to sing. My husband and I wanted to spend time together because he is always on tour and I am always on the set and it was really something that we wanted to do to come together as a family. Then we found out that we were going to have a baby so it started to make more sense.
OMC: What are you trying to accomplish with your music?
IB: A lot of it was inspired by the birth of my son. I mean, "Welcome to the world! Anything can happen." Even the title track is geared to a message that you can do anything in the world that you put your mind to. You have to try to think of yourself as a peaceful person (Irene's name means "peace") and an advocate for peace as much as you can in life. That was the direction I was going for. Especially in the Native community and the urban Native community, you end up with so much violence in the world and you try to balance that out.
OMC: When you were making the album, why did you decide to use guitars and techno?
IB: My husband went out on his last tour and really learned how make people dance. When he came back from the tour, he started working on all these techno beats. When we started performing together, it was really great to see people dancing. It's really something for us to see people shaking it, moving it and grooving it.
OMC: You have acted in over 30 movies and are best known for "Pocahontas," but I remember you from "Smoke Signals." Which movie do you hold dear to your heart?
IB: That's so hard to decide because they all have various reasons why I love them. I think "Lakota Woman," which was produced by Jane Fonda and I was nominated for a Golden Globe for it. It was my second movie, and I was the lead character, and it was based on a true story about a woman named Mary Crow Dog (an Native American who became a part of the American Indian Movement and aided the Lakota in their struggle for rights, which led up to the events at Wounded Knee in 1973), and it followed her story, and I got to meet her and a lot of the people who were at the Siege at Wounded Knee, and lots of people who were part of the community as well. For me, it was a major turning point in my understanding of being a Native American and it was really great.
OMC: What has your organization Guardians of Sacred Lands been up to lately?
IB: I haven't been able to do much with them lately because I have had the baby and I have been working on films and now I'm busy with the music. Some of the things we've done in the past are worked with various Indian nations to help them to retrieve their land which was signed away by Clinton. Basically, this is the land that their grandmother and their great-grandmother lived on. They buried their umbilical cords in the earth so they think of themselves as part of the Earth. It's not just relocation. They actually had a forced relocation to the world's largest nuclear waste dump. It was really tragic. A lot of the elders who lived out there for quite sometime really didn't understand what was happening or why they had to be removed from their land. So we did some benefit concerts. We have worked on things have come up with cleaning up the rivers and having to do with taking back the ancestral lands.
OMC: Anything to look forward to in the future?
IB: We're going to tour here in Milwaukee, Chicago, Ohio, Alaska and New York. Right now, I have three films that are coming out next year, and one or two of them are going to Sundance. One of them ("Edge of America," which is scheduled to premiere on Showtime next year), is by the same director who did "Smoke Signals. " The other one is called "Tortilla Heaven," which is about a small town in New Mexico where someone sees the face of Jesus on a tortilla. It stars George Lopez and Olivia Hussey. In "Your Guardian," I play a costume designer for a drag show, and I leave Reno and end up in a small town where I find myself again. It is kind a romantic comedy. We hope to continue touring because it affords us the opportunity to be together. I'm trying to stay away from acting in films for a little while, but I have a series of mystery novels that I am producing and starring in about an Alaskan native private investigator who works for the Anchorage District Attorney. It is set in Alaska where I am from originally, so hopefully it will give me a chance to spend some a few months there.
Irene Bedard and Deni will be at the Miller Main Stage during Indian Summer on Fri., Sept. 5 at 5:30 p.m. and Sat., Sept. 6 at 4:30 p.m. They will also play at the Milwaukee Ale House on Sat., Sept.13 at 9:30 p.m.
