2 Degrees To DiCaprio

Loren Yellow Bird has a memory he won’t be forgetting any time soon. He was standing in the mountains of Alberta, surrounded by the cast and crew of a Hollywood film and having celebrated film actor Leonardo DiCaprio shout out to him for help after struggling with a line.

This wasn’t an average day for Yellow Bird, who had never worked on a Hollywood film before, and in DiCaprio’s defense, he was speaking a language that wasn’t his own. He was speaking the native language of Yellow Bird’s people, the Arikara.

As Arikara technical advisor on “The Revenant,” which tells the story about 19th-century frontiersman and fur trader Hugh Glass being mauled by a bear and left for dead by his companions, Yellow Bird was instrumental in assuring the language was spoken correctly and the battle scenes were historically accurate.

While Yellow Bird had previously done work on a PBS film “Lewis and Clark Pathways” and the History Channel production “The Taming of the West,” it was his knowledge of the Arikara people and the fact that he’s Arikara himself that grabbed the attention of the film’s producers.

It started a year and half ago when the Fort Union park ranger spotted an open cast call for a film telling Glass’ story. The producers were looking for Native American actors, so Yellow Bird — after some persuasion from friends and family — decided to take a crack at it. He submitted his material a day late, but it was enough to get the casting director’s attention.

After calls back and forth between him and the casting director, he was told they were eyeing him for the role of Elk Dog, the Arikara chief in the film. Eventually he found himself on the phone with co-producer Alex Scott. Once Scott uncovered Yellow Bird’s background, he said the director would like to meet him and asked when he could fly out there.

“We were right in the middle of summer,” Yellow Bird says, noting that was a busy time of year at Fort Union. “This was 2014 in July. I said, ‘I just can’t get away like that.’ ” They got off the phone and Scott called him back ten minutes later and said, “What do we have to do to get you up here?”

Two days later he found himself landing in Calgary and being shuffled into a vehicle and driven out to set.

They were preparing the opening battle sequence where an Arikara tribe attacks a group of hunters, including DiCaprio’s Hugh Glass, and wanted Yellow Bird’s help in accurately portraying the fighting styles of the Arikara. He then demonstrated some of his knowledge of the Arikara language, much to director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s delight.

When he returned home after the two days he was available, he corresponded with the co-producer, the dialect coach, the assistant director and others through phone and email doing several translations for them. Eventually, he was overwhelmed.

“Finally, I said, ‘Well, I know I’m doing all this work for you guys. I’m just wondering ...,’ and they said, ‘We’re sending you a contract.’ ” When asked what he wanted, he told them he didn’t know. “I should’ve said, ‘Well, what is Leo getting?’ ”

When filming concluded, they flew him out to Los Angeles to work on post-production, which included voiceover work. He spent a whole day with DiCaprio and Inarritu fine tuning the pronunciation of Arikara words and he even participated in the voice acting.

“There’s a part in there, in the film, where Leo’s running and they’re in this fight already and he stops and looks up in the tree and there’s a guy up there so he shoots a gun and it hits him,” Yellow Bird says. The scream as the man falls was Yellow Bird giving out his best death cry.

Since “The Revenant” was released Christmas day it has received critical acclaim, being nominated for 12 Academy Awards. The film recently took home three Golden Globe awards for Best Motion Picture Drama, Best Director and Best Actor in a Drama Movie for DiCaprio’s role as Hugh Glass.

Yellow Bird has held the position of park ranger and interpreter at Fort Union for close to 16 years and the site also happens to be where Hugh Glass worked as a hunter before his death in 1833. He received degrees in anthropology and history from NDSU in 1999 and 2001, and has been published in both fields.

The experience is very humbling to Yellow Bird. While he enjoys the work he put into it himself, it’s the fact that the story of his people and their language is being represented.

“It’s a gift that we’re trying to hang on to,” he says. “[The movie] definitely made our people proud.”