The notion that Kevin Costner’s Oscar-winning directorial debut Dances With Wolves (1990), set during the US civil war, was somehow radical or revisionist in its take on the western, tended to come from people who hadn’t seen many westerns.
It did depart from precedent in one respect, however, by using Native American and First Nations actors to play its Sioux and Pawnee characters, with much of the dialogue delivered in the Lakota language with English subtitles. The most impressive of these performers was Graham Greene, who has died aged 73.
