“Westworld” actor David Midthunder estimates there are only about a dozen Native American actors in Hollywood — so it’s unique that both David and his daughter, Amber Midthunder (FX’s “Legion”), currently appear on popular TV shows.
“[Acting] is not looked down upon [in Native American culture],” says Midthunder, who doubles as one of “Westworld’s” Lakota consultants. “But there’s no portal to do it. A lot of our people are still just trying to survive. It’s like saying, ‘I want to be a professional unicorn trainer.’”
Both David and Amber are enrolled members of the Fort Peck Sioux tribe, and David spent much of his childhood on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana. Neither father nor daughter reveal their ages (David says that’s unseemly in Lakota tradition) — but he was born in the ’60s while Amber came along in the ’90’s.
David’s path to acting stemmed from a childhood split between California (for the school year) and Montana (in the summers). “None of my non-Native friends understood the world that I came from. And in California, I became a surfer and a skateboarder, so my relatives back home didn’t understand that world either,” he says. “Maybe that’s how I became an actor. I’d have to fit into these diverse cultures that had no idea about each other.”
He also wasn’t allowed to publicly discuss his Lakota traditions, fearing retribution, until 1978, when President Carter signed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. “I grew up learning to not talk about Lakota religion to people outside of the tribe,” he says. “It was punishable by imprisonment or being put in a mental institution. For my generation, leaving the [reservation] was a scary thought at times. For my kids’ generation, it’s a lot better.”
David’s career took off while he attended the University of Utah, when he was chosen to ride a horse during football games as part of the school’s tradition to represent the local Ute tribe. “Some people from a movie saw [and recruited] me,” he said. “It didn’t mean anything to me at the time other than helping pay for my living expenses while I was going to school. But all of a sudden I had an agent … and it started happening.”
By the time Amber was born, David’s career was well-established (he’s appeared in shows like “Longmire” and movies like “Transformers: Age of Extinction”). “If I say yes to a project, it has to be one like HBO’s ‘Westworld’,” David says. “They really showed such a degree of wanting to treat us with accuracy.” He appeared in Season 2’s “Journey Into The Night” as Takoda, a member of Ghost Nation (the Native American tribe in the series) and he was a consultant on “Kiksuya,” the episode which revealed the Native American plotline as integral to the show’s mythology.
Amber, who plays Kerry Loudermilk on “Legion” — a mutant who shares a body with Cary Loudermilk (Bill Irwin) — split her childhood between her family’s home in New Mexico, where David now lives with his wife Angelique, a casting director, and visiting her father on location. “I grew up around the industry,” she says. “Whenever my dad had a job, I would go visit him on set. That’s really my foundation … watching my parents do their thing. They let me figure that out.”
Amber, who will also recur on The CW’s upcoming “Roswell, New Mexico,” is coy about her role on Season 3 of “Legion,” but says she appreciates how the series treats her culture. “My role in ‘Legion’ was not originally written as a Native American,” she says. “I just went in and got the job, and it’s mentioned in one episode. It’s not ignored but it’s not the centerpiece. I think that is the biggest compliment that you can give to any minority: inclusion but not focus. I’m a Native American girl, but I’m also so many other things.”
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