Noah Watts (born December 29, 1983) is a Native American actor and musician, a member of the Crow Tribe, and a descendant of the Blackfeet Nation. He bears the Crow name Bulaagawish, which means "Old Bull".
Noah Watts is a descendant of the Blackfeet Nation. He was born in Livingston, Montana, and grew up in Bozeman, Montana. [1]
At the age of 17, while a senior in high school, Noah's first professional audition landed him a role in the film The Slaughter Rule . After filming for The Slaughter Rule was complete, he took three weeks off from school to act in the Chris Eyre film Skins . He graduated Bozeman High School in May 2001 and soon won a scholarship to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles. [2]
During his first semester at AADA, Noah was offered a part in a Chris Eyre film titled Skinwalkers as a teenage gang-leader and suspected murderer—a role far different from the shy, devoted son he played in Skins.
In the Southwest Repertory Company's production of the play "The Indolent Boys", written by N. Scott Momaday, Noah played the role of a young Native man in a boarding school in the 1800s, who was being trained to be a Christian missionary, but is conflicted between his Native culture and the Christian religion inculcated.
In the spring of 2005, Watts was cast in Native Voices at the Autry's Native American adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet entitled Kino and Teresa, written by James Lujan (Taos Pueblo), where he played the villain Eladio (an adaption of Tybalt). Noah also took part in an independent film entitled The Last Beyond as Joe Running Elk, a young man in the Great Depression who began a life of adventure outside the law after losing his job working on the railroad.
Native Voices at the Autry cast Noah as the lead character in "Salvage" written by Diane Glancy (Cherokee) and directed by Sheila Tousey (Menominee, Stockbridge Munsee) in 2008. The play, set in Browning Montana, was remounted in 2009 for Borderlands Origins Festival in London England at The Riverside Studios.
In 2012 Watts performed his first major voice acting role as Ratonhnaké:ton (or Connor), the protagonist of Assassin's Creed III , for whom he also provided motion capture and facial animation. He reprised the role as a supporting character in Assassin's Creed III: Liberation , also in 2012, as well as a cameo appearance in a DLC chapter for 2013's Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag .
When auditioning for Assassin’s Creed 3, Watts did not know anything about the job except that it was a period piece about the Revolutionary War. When he got the role of Connor, Watts had to sign a nondisclosure document that revealed that he would be in an Assassin’s Creed game. After years of voice acting on television shows and films, Watts reported that the shift to voice acting for a video game was challenging, but he felt that he had a real connection with the character of Connor. There was also the challenge of Watts learning and speaking Kanien'kéha Mohawk; being part Crow and Blackfeet, Watts not only had to learn a completely different language, but also a different culture because his tribe are plains Indians [3] .
Since his appearance in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, Watts has been pursuing a music career. After being offered a job to be a guitar player for a coworker’s band, Watts started taking his music career more seriously. Watts played for four different bands as a hired guitarist before quitting to pursue his own songs and forming his own band, Nickels and Bones, whose music style resembles punk rock. Watts has expressed plans to start a new band with new members, and values his writing and sound because he loves the limitless opportunities that come along with music. Although he loves acting, Watts has noted that his music is his passion because he is able to express his own words and that is the one thing he cares about [4] .
The Piegan are an Algonquian-speaking people from the North American Great Plains. They are the largest of three Blackfoot-speaking groups that make up the Blackfoot Confederacy; the Siksika and Kainai are the others. The Piegan dominated much of the northern Great Plains during the nineteenth century.
Montana is the 41st state to enter the United States, and has a culturally-diverse population representing a broad spectrum of music genre, style, and instrumentation.
The Bozeman Trail was an overland route in the Western United States, connecting the gold rush territory of southern Montana to the Oregon Trail in eastern Wyoming. Its most important period was from 1863 to 1868. Despite the fact that the major part of the route in Wyoming used by all Bozeman Trail travelers in 1864 was pioneered by Allen Hurlbut, it was named after John Bozeman. Many miles of the Bozeman Trail in present Montana followed the tracks of Bridger Trail, opened by Jim Bridger in 1864.
James Phillip Welch Jr., who grew up within the Blackfeet and A'aninin cultures of his parents, was a Native American novelist and poet, considered a founding author of the Native American Renaissance. His novel Fools Crow (1986) received several national literary awards, and his debut novel Winter in the Blood (1974) was adapted as a film by the same name, released in 2013.
Running Eagle (Pi'tamaka) was a Native American woman and war chief of the Blackfeet Tribe known for her success in battle.
Thomas H. Leforge was an American writer who was the author of Memoirs of a White Crow Indian, his highly detailed account of living among the Crow Indian nation during the mid-to-late 19th century, first published in March 1928 by The Century Company at the hand of Thomas B. Marquis, and republished by the University of Nebraska Press.
Michael Spears is an Indigenous American actor. He is a member of the Kul Wičaša Lakota from the Lower Brulé Sioux Tribe of South Dakota.
Desmond Miles is a fictional character from Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed video game series. He is the protagonist of five Assassin's Creed installments, with his journey uniting the frame story of the first five installments. Desmond has also appeared in smaller capacity in subsequent games in the series, as well as various spin-off media. He is voiced by actor Nolan North, and modeled after Canadian fashion model Francisco Randez. According to several video game journalists and authors, Desmond's character is meant to represent a form of transcendence symbolically from the necessity of the human body.
Same-sex marriage has been recognized in Montana since a federal district court ruled the state's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional on November 19, 2014. Montana had previously denied marriage rights to same-sex couples by statute since 1997 and in its State Constitution since 2004. The state appealed the ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but before that court could hear the case, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all same-sex marriage bans in the country in Obergefell v. Hodges, mooting any remaining appeals.
Assassin's Creed is a historical action-adventure video game series and media franchise published by Ubisoft and developed mainly by its studio Ubisoft Montreal using the game engine Anvil and its more advanced derivatives. Created by Patrice Désilets, Jade Raymond, and Corey May, the Assassin's Creed video game series depicts a fictional millennia-old struggle between the Order of Assassins, who fight for peace and free will, and the Knights Templar, who desire peace through order and control. The series features historical fiction, science fiction, and fictional characters intertwined with real-world historical events and historical figures. In most games, players control a historical Assassin while also playing as an Assassin Initiate or someone caught in the Assassin–Templar conflict in the present-day framing story. Considered a spiritual successor to the Prince of Persia series, Assassin's Creed took inspiration from the novel Alamut by the Slovenian writer Vladimir Bartol, based on the historical Hashashin sect of the medieval Middle East.
Assassin's Creed III is a 2012 action-adventure video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It is the fifth major installment in the Assassin's Creed series, and a direct sequel to 2011's Assassin's Creed: Revelations. The game was released worldwide for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, beginning in North America on October 30, 2012, with a Wii U and Microsoft Windows release in November 2012. A remastered version of the game was released in 2019 for Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, and in 2021 for Google Stadia.
The portrayal of Indigenous people of the Americas in popular culture has oscillated between the fascination with the noble savage who lives in harmony with nature, and the stereotype of the uncivilized Red Indian of the traditional Western genre. The common depiction of Indigenous Americans and their relationship with European colonists has changed over time. Today indigenous Americans are fully modern peoples who retain much of their cultural beliefs and traditional practices.
Assassin's Creed III: Liberation is a 2012 action-adventure video game developed by Ubisoft Sofia and published by Ubisoft Entertainment. Part of the Assassin's Creed series, it is a spin-off to Assassin's Creed III, and was originally released for the PlayStation Vita on October 30, 2012, in North America, with a worldwide launch the following day.
Ratonhnhaké:ton, commonly known by his adopted name Connor, is a fictional character in the video game series Assassin's Creed. A half-British, half-Mohawk Master Assassin who serves as a central character in the games set around the American Revolution, he first appears as the main protagonist of Assassin's Creed III (2012), in which he is portrayed by Native American actor Noah Watts through performance capture, and voiced by Jamie Mayers as a young child. He also makes a minor appearance in the tie-in game Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, and is the narrator of the novel Assassin's Creed: Forsaken (2012). The character has made further appearances in various spin-off media of the franchise.
Haytham E. Kenway is a character in Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed video game franchise. He is introduced as the false protagonist of Assassin's Creed III (2012), in which players control him for the game's initial chapters, before being revealed as the true antagonist. Haytham also serves as a supporting character in Assassin's Creed Rogue (2014), which takes place between his playable chapters in Assassin's Creed III and the latter part of the game, and his backstory is further explored in the novel Assassin's Creed: Forsaken. In the games, he is portrayed by actor Adrian Hough through performance capture.
Lily Gladstone is an American actress. Raised on the Blackfeet Reservation, Gladstone is of Piegan Blackfeet, Nez Perce, and European heritage. She earned critical acclaim for portraying Mollie Kyle, an Osage woman who survived the Osage Indian murders, in Martin Scorsese's crime drama film Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), receiving several accolades. She became the first Native American to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama and be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Jessica Louise Donaldson Schultz Graham (1887–1976) was an English professor at Montana State College and social worker on Native reservations in Montana and Wyoming.
Assassin's Creed III: The Tyranny of King Washington is a downloadable content (DLC) expansion pack developed and published by Ubisoft for the 2012 action-adventure video game Assassin's Creed III. Set after the events of the base game, it follows its main playable character, Ratonhnhaké:ton / Connor, as he awakens in what appears to be an alternate reality where the game's events involving him have never happened. He is tasked to find and defeat a fictionalized version of George Washington, who is empowered but mentally corrupted by an otherworldly artifact. After crowning himself King of the newly-founded United States of America, Washington began to enslave the population of the American frontier and massacre those who resist his tyranny. Connor gains new mystical abilities over the course of the pack's narrative as he attempts to stop Washington and return to his original timeline.