From mail room to silver screen

Actor seeks docudrama on 1862 Uprising

By FRITZ BUSCH

Journal Staff Writer

Who knows what tomorrow brings

in a world where few hearts survive.

All I know is the way I feel.

When it's real,

I keep it alive.

The road is long.

There are mountains in the way,

but we climb a step every day.

Love lift us up where we belong,

far from the world we know,

up where the clear winds blow.

"Up Where We Belong," by Buffy Sainte-Marie, Will Jennings, Jack Nitzsche, Copyright Famous Music-ASCAP

MORTON -- Lower Sioux member Sheldon Peters Wolfchild has appeared in a variety of movies, television shows and commercials over the past few decades.

Among his movie credits are Sioux Warrior #2 in Dances With Wolves which won many Academy Awards. His biggest and most important production may be yet to come -- he wants to create a movie depicting the 1862 U.S.-Dakota conflict.

Rewind to the turbulent late 1960's. The Vietnam War was escalating. Wolfchild attended several out-of-state art schools. He was working as a commercial artist in Minneapolis in 1969 when he was drafted into the U.S. Army infantry. He wound up in the jungles of Vietnam.

After two years in the Army, he stopped in Los Angeles, Calif. on the way back home. He applied for work at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank and wound up in the mail room.

Before long, he moved on to Disney's art service and set decorating departments. Enthralled with movies, he moved on to handling props in feature films like The Love Bug that starred Fred McMurray.

While in the entertainment industry, Wolfchild met and married folk song writer, singer and Native American activist Buffy Sainte-Marie. She helped write the academy-award winning song "Up Where We Belong" among many other love and protest songs performed by a wide variety of artists.

The couple lived in Hawaii and traveled the world with their son, Dakota Wolfchild Starblanket. The boy and Sainte-Marie appeared on Sesame Street from 1974 to 1979.

Returning to LA, Sheldon took acting and stage classes and learned to respect it as an art that created life through a character, as he put it.

Originally hired as a principal actor for Dances With Wolves, many of his scenes wound up on the cutting room floor after the movie ran into financial woes and actor Kevin Costner had to use his own money to complete it in 1990.

Wolfchild's other credits in the 1980's and 1990's included Crazy Horse, The Scarlet Letter, TV mini-series 500 Nations, 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up, Squanto: A Warrior's Tale, Miracle in the Wilderness, Son of the Morning Star, and The Avenging. Many of his movies can be seen on the TNT television network.

His notable TV guest appearances were on "Walker, Texas Ranger," "Star Trek: The Next Generation," and with Graham Green on "LA Law."

Wolfchild had the distinction of being a part of the first Dodge Dakota (pickup truck) commercial.

More recently, his work included a docudrama on Dakota elders tribal rights and enrollment issues. In his next TV pilot, he'll play a Native American fishing guide on "The Gail Wittman Show" a satire on Minnesota fishing issues. The show will air every Saturday, beginning at 2 p.m., Saturday, March 15 on Channel 45.

Wolfchild took the Dakota elders rights issue to Minnesota senators and congressmen. He got responses from the late Sen. Paul Wellstone (ironically just three days before he died) and Rep. Gil Gutknecht.

Regarding his dreams of a movie on the 1862 U.S.-Dakota Conflict, he wants to stress issues he viewed as the U.S. government's attempts to bankrupt Native Americans with greedy government agents.

Wolfchild said agents marked up reservation food prices and charged excessive interest rates on credit. Add starvation caused in part by the 1862 drought and you have his view of what helped start the 1862 battle.

"I want to show people that Native Americans weren't all savages, like some books refer to us as," Wolfchild said. "There were some good reasons why the war started like mass starvation of our people."