Richard Ray Whitman | |
|---|---|
 Richard Ray Whiteman, 2010 | |
| Born | T'so-ya-ha 1949 (age 74–75) Claremore, Oklahoma, U.S. |
| Nationality | Yuchi-Muscogee Nation |
| Known for | Photography, mixed-media, film, painting |
| Notable work | Street Chiefs |
| Website | https://richardraywhitman.wordpress.com/ |
Richard Ray Whiteman (born 1949) is a Yuchi-Muscogee multidisciplinary visual artist, poet, and actor. He is enrolled in the Muscogee Nation and lives in Oklahoma. [1] [2]
Whitman was born in Claremore, Oklahoma, in 1949. [3] His maternal grandmother was Polly Long. [1] Like many Yuchis, Whitman is enrolled in the Muscogee Nation, and his Yuchi name is T'so-ya-ha. [4] He grew up in Gypsy, Oklahoma, and attended Bristow High School. He also attended the Institute of American Indian Arts, the California Institute of the Arts, and the Oklahoma School of Photography in Oklahoma City. [1]
Whitman began his art career as a painter and expanded to photography, installation, and video art. [4] In 1973, he participated in the 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee and created art during the occupation.
Whitman is known for his black-and-white photography portraying contemporary Native realities, especially his "Street Chiefs Series" from the 1970s and 1980s. "Street Chiefs" features images of homeless Native men, primarily in downtown Oklahoma City. "The contemporary Indian in the isolation of the city canyons and rural reservations is avoided. The boredom, pain, frustration, poverty of the reality-counterbalance of our lives is harsh, unattractive, and unmarketable." [2] His photographic portraits are compassionate and empathetic to the lives of homeless natives and places them in the larger context of Indian Removal, which forced tribes from all over the country to Indian Territory. [4]
From the 1980s onward, Whitman has incorporated text and computer graphics in his photography to create collage or mixed media. His socio-politically informed work often deals with the issues of homeland and dispossession. [4]
Collaborating with Yuchi poet and brother Joe Dale Tate Nevaquaya, Whitman created video to document the Yuchi language. Together they worked with French filmmaker Pierre Lobstein in the 1990s. Whitman read T.C. Cannon's poetry in the video "Mazerunner: The Life and Art of T.C. Cannon" which was directed and edited by Phillip Albert. This work was subsequently screened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (3/19/1994) and was presented on the Bravo Cable Channel and the Independent Film Channel from May, 1995 through June, 1996.
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1988 | War Party | Harold | |
| 2003 | American Indian Graffiti: This Thing Life | Barry | |
| 2006 | Rune | Tecpatel | |
| 2007 | Four Sheets to the Wind | Frankie Smallhill | |
| 2007 | Missionary Man | Chief Dan | |
| 2009 | The Only Good Indian | Father of stolen child | |
| 2009 | Barking Water | Frankie | |
| 2013 | Winter in the Blood | John First Raise | |
| 2013 | The Cherokee Word for Water | Roger | |
| 2014 | Drunktown's Finest | Harmon, John | |
| 2016 | Neither Wolf Nor Dog | Grover | |
| 2021 | Oklahoma Mon Amour | Lloyd | |
| 2021 | Montford: The Chickasaw Rancher | Joe Carlton | |
| 2022 | The Unknown Country | Grandpa August | |
| 2024 | Jazzy | Grandpa August | Post-production |
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1994 | Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee | Carter Camp | Television film |
| 2019 | Chambers | Harrison Yazzie | 3 episodes |
| 2021–2022 | Reservation Dogs | Old Man Fixico | 5 episodes |
The Yuchi people, also spelled Euchee and Uchee, are a Native American tribe based in Oklahoma. Their original homeland was in the southeast of the present United States.
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Tommy Wayne Cannon was an important Native American artist of the 20th century. He was popularly known as T. C. Cannon. He was an enrolled member of the Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma and had Caddo and French ancestry.
For state legislator of Borth Carolina Alexander C. McIntosh see North Carolina General Assembly of 1899–1900
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Southern Plains Indian Museum is a Native American museum located in Anadarko, Oklahoma. It was opened in 1948 under a cooperative governing effort by the United States Department of the Interior and the Oklahoma state government. The museum features cultural and artistic works from Oklahoma tribal peoples of the Southern Plains region, including the Caddo, Chiricahua Apache, Comanche, Delaware Nation, Kiowa, Plains Apache, Southern Arapaho, Southern Cheyenne, and Wichita.
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