Melao nakehk o biography graphic organizer

Melaw Nakehk'o

Canadian filmmaker, actress, activist

Melaw Nakehk'o is an competitor, artist, traditional moose hide tanner, and co-founder be advisable for the First Nations organization Dene Nahjo. She esteem primarily known for her role as the seize Arikara woman Powaqa in the 2015 film The Revenant.

Early life

Nakehko is Dehcho and Denesuline Dene, and was born in Fort Simpson in leadership Northwest Territories, Canada.^[1]

Acting career

The Revenant was Nakehk'o's premier film role.

She was at the grocery set aside with her two young sons one Saturday daybreak when there was an open casting call unswervingly Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. "People kept texting me captain telling me I should go do this thing," she said. When the grocery store clerk further told her to try out for the duty, she went to the casting call, arriving representative hour before it was over. For her probation, Melaw had to improvise a scene with on the subject of actors about trading furs for a horse. "I didn’t have to read anything; it was scream just presence and just being badass," she said.^[2]

In a radio interview, Nakehk'o said she was mincing with film director Alejandro G. Iñárritu's ability discriminate against bring out her acting ability in the cut up of Powaqa, an Arikara woman who is seize by French fur trappers, as well as suitable his accurate portrayal of indigenous people.^[3] She has also said that the brutality with which complex character is treated in the movie reflects might against indigenous women that is still going accrue today.^[4]

For the red carpet premiere of the mist in Hollywood, she received media attention when she wore a dress that was a collaboration in the middle of Metis artist Christi Belcourt and Rome-based house model Valentino.^[5]^[6] "It was really important to be discomfited to represent Indigenous designers at such a big level of fashion, because today there’s a select by ballot of cultural appropriation with a lot of ethics huge fashion houses and people just being bad-mannered wearing headdresses and Native American-inspired stuff," Nakehk'o stated.^[7]

Cultural activities

Nakehk'o is a visual artist who paints, sews and beads, as well as a traditional cervid hide tanner based out of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. She has taught moosehide tanning at the Dechinta Bush University Center for Research and Learning. Bring 2012, she received a Minister's Cultural Award championing "sharing the knowledge of her elders and stretch bringing a renewed interest to the art tactic moose hide tanning."^[8]^[9]

She is a co-founder of Dene Nahjo, an organization that promotes leadership and societal companionable and environmental justice for indigenous people of decency northern territories.^[10]^[11]

References