Gillam actor brings warmth to Indian Horse

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This article was published 12/04/2018 (2708 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If the movie Indian Horse is a dark tale of abuse and survival, one of its bright lights is embodied by Michael Lawrenchuk.

The Gillam-born actor plays Fred Kelly, a warm and loving father figure who effectively adopts troubled hero Saul Indian Horse, a young man who emerges from a brutal Ontario residential school with formidable hockey skills, but also a wicked case of survivor’s guilt.

Even on the phone from Gillam, “where you get your hydro power,” Lawrenchuk exudes the warmth and humour of his character in discussing the movie.

“Every actor will tell you that their character is the most important,” he says. “So I’m not going to break that tradition.

“The character I play represents so many unsung heroes across this country of people that help other Indigenous people that are struggling,” he says. “Because they’re out there.

“The role that I play was actually going to be played by (Indian Horse author) Richard Wagamese, so I felt it was an incredible honour to take over that part,” he says. “(Director Stephen Campanelli) told me what he was looking for was someone that was warm, that was loving, that was safe for people to go to.”

Lawrenchuk, 61, did not attend a residential school.

“I was very lucky that I didn’t go,” he says. “All my aunties and uncles went.”

But he relates to the hero’s dilemma of growing up in a hostile environment.

“The similarities are that environments were created where we could not prosper,” the former chief of Fox Lake Cree Nation says. “The Manitoba Hydro town of Gillam was created so the needs of the dominant people at the time were met and not the needs of the people in the area… so Indigenous people could not continue to be who they were.

“Incredible pressures were put on us, and environments were created so that our culture, our traditions, our customs would disappear,” he says. “So we had to find ways of surviving that.”

Lawrenchuk’s own survival came in the form of theatre.

“When I left Gillam in the mid-’80s to go to university, I knew there was something fundamentally wrong with me, that I was not healthy,” he says. “So the university offered courses in psychology, which I thought I should take.

“So I majored in psychology for three or four years, and I soon realized I had to do something about my shyness because I was definitely shy.

“I was so shy, people thought I was a snob,” he says. “I had the exterior of a confident man, but on the inside I was so afraid of being judged, so I took a theatre course and that changed my life.

“The nature of theatre and acting is that you have to explore yourself as a human being, and if you’re going to prepare yourself to act other roles, you have to delve into your own psyche,” he says. “And that’s exactly what I needed, and as I was studying, I realized this was a healthy place for me to explore who I was. Because I came from a really dysfunctional community, I incorporated masks into my life, and as my profs were pulling off my masks to show who I was, this vitriol and anger would come out.

“They helped me through it, and that’s what theatre did for me,” he says.

“It literally gave me back my soul,” he says, adding slyly: “One of the things theatre people know is that it will give you your soul, but it won’t give you any money.”

Certainly, the film gives him a sense of satisfaction.

“One of the things that I hope comes out of this movie is that people will look at Indigenous people and say, ‘Your struggle was really really hard. I understand now why you fell down so often.’”

randall.king@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @FreepKing