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Reservation Dogs’ Gary Farmer Has Seen it All


“As I look back on everything, it seems to me that having a career at all is pretty special in itself.”

Much like Uncle Brownie, the shambling, warmhearted eccentric he played for three seasons on Sterlin Harjo ’s Reservation Dogs, Gary Farmer takes the long view of things and rarely turns down the chance to be funny about it. Born into the Cayuga Nation and Wolf Clan of the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois Confederacy, he grew up in Buffalo, New York, where his father operated a construction crane, and started acting in the mid-1970s, when roles for Indigenous actors were scarce. The character you play in Powwow Highway, Philbert Bono, starts his journey by trading weed for a “war pony,” which is actually a Buick Wildcat, so he can go on a vision quest and thwart some strip miners.

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