As a very young child I was raised out in the country. My dad was an actor in movies and TV shows. He was a horseman from the east coast. He became a cowboy actor in the nineteen forties. He was a double for Errol Flynn and they were friends. He was also a double for John Barrymore.

He did all those cowboy TV shows in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties such as Gunsmoke and Wagon Train. He had small parts.

My mother was very beautiful and he would get her small roles as Native American women.

We lived out in the country, in Arizona, in movie sets. My father was in his fifties when I was born, so he wanted to retire. He said that he was tired of falling off the horses, so we moved to the burbs.

So there we were, all of us and living in Downey in white, suburban, middle-class America. It was difficult having mixed-race parents. People said things, kids said things. We experienced a lot of prejudice.

My dad met my mom when he walked into a soda fountain. She was behind the counter and she was strikingly beautiful. After talking to her for a while he asked her if she wanted to be in motion pictures.

She said: Yeah, right!

But they started dating and that’s how that happened. This happened in Los Angeles. The Arizona thing happened when they were doing movies.

I went to the Woodbury University, where I was an art and fashion major. It was in downtown Los Angeles although I think now it may have moved to Pasadena. It was well known for art, fashion, and design.

A Lifelong Quest to Find My Lost Native American Roots

I’m very proud of my artwork. I’ve traveled all over South America and have visited many of the major archaeological sites. I’ve made paintings of those sites. My mother is Native American, but she was raised out of the culture. Her mother was raised out of the culture, too. It meant so much to both of us that we’ve researched our genealogy and looked into our Native American roots. And my mother is full-blooded!

I started doing Native American art work, and for some reason I was really drawn to Central American Indians so I started to go down there. I’m really proud of that: the research, the genealogy, that getting in touch with my Native American roots.