Four decades after launching his acting career in Tulsa, Oscar winner Wes Studi returned Thursday to be honored by Tulsa Community College students for his groundbreaking career that has elevated Indigenous voices in film and beyond.
TCC’s Native American Student Alliance hosted the event inside Thomas K. McKeon Center for Creativity to celebrate the achievements of the TCC alumnus, who has starred in numerous legendary films, including “Dances With Wolves,” “The Last of the Mohicans,” “Heat” and “Avatar.”
“It was a wonderful place to actually begin to realize what the world was made up of,” Studi said about his time at TCC. “I am so glad that I took the opportunity to use my G.I. Bill to attend classes here, as it was, I like to say, the awakening on a political and societal level that has brought me to where I am today. It was also the beginning of the recognition that I was not only Cherokee, but I was also a Native American, Indigenous or people of this land.”
Studi, a U.S. Army veteran, enrolled in classes in the early 1970s at what was then Tulsa Junior College. At the same time, he started a Cherokee newspaper and taught Cherokee language, according to TCC professor Steven Woods, who introduced Studi at Thursday’s event.
It was in that era that Studi joined the American Indian Theater Company to begin his acting career. In 1984, the company’s production of “Black Elk Speaks” at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center starred the late Will Sampson, the late David Carradine, and Studi, whose experiences in that production motivated him to pursue film roles.
After building a successful career in Hollywood, Studi returned to Oklahoma to play a small role in Sterlin Harjo’s “Reservation Dogs” from 2021-2023. Studi returned to the Tulsa stage in 2024 to perform in a production of “Nanyehi” at Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Tulsa.
The student-led event featured the unveiling of a new art installation created by Cherokee artist Bryan Waytula and Nick White, inspired by Studi’s life and legacy. The portrait will hang in TCC’s northeast campus.
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