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The historical figures championed in the Aboriginal People’s Television Network’s Secret History: Women Warriors are not household names.
The Pine Leaf Woman, or Bíawacheeitchish, was a female chief and fierce crow warrior who negotiated peace among warring tribes in the 19th century. Edith Anderson-Monture was a Mohawk Second World War vet who was stationed on the front lines in France as Canada’s first Indigenous nurse. Shaaw Tláa, or Kate Carmack, was a Tlingit woman who used her knowledge of the land to guide a party to finding gold in the Yukon in the 1890s. Buffalo Calf Road Woman was a northern Cheyenne warrior who saved her wounded brother in the 1876 Battle of the Rosebud and helped lead the Cheyenne to victory. Charlotte Small was the Cree wife of explorer David Thompson.
Women Warriors is the second season of Secret History. It first ran in 2021 under the name The Secret History: The Wild West and was a 13-part docuseries that was the brainchild of Calgary’s Julian Black Antelope. He created, produced, wrote and narrated the series as a character named The Trickster, chronicling some of the unknown Indigenous figures who helped shape Western Canada. In that first season, all of the figures profiled were male.
“Women Warriors goes right across North America and is focused on the achievements of Indigenous women over the last 300 years,” says Black Antelope, in a phone interview from Los Angeles. “They were put in the shadows by their male counterparts a lot of the time and I wanted to bring that out. Some of the characters we do, we’ve heard their names before, like Charlotte Small, but there wasn’t really an in-depth look into what they did. In the case of Charlotte Small as an example, if it weren’t for her, David Thompson wouldn’t have lived long enough to achieve the accolades he is known for.”
Like the first season, Women Warriors was filmed entirely in Alberta. It was a bit of a long slog. As with most projects, COVID-19 delayed production. It began shooting in 2023, but the pandemic and post-pandemic pile-up of projects meant securing a crew was difficult, which led to more delays.
But Season 2 can now be seen on APTN, where it has been airing since early September. Black Antelope created the series to shine a light on the often-overlooked contributions of Indigenous people in shaping our history. Season 2 just peels back another layer of secrecy, highlighting figures who were doubly overlooked for being both Indigenous and women.
As with the first season, it mixes dramatizations and interviews with elders and experts with the Trickster acting as our occasionally irreverent guide. Given the sparse information on some of these characters, research was not easy.
“There is very little known about them and even less known about the people that they come from,” Black Antelope says.
APTN has already greenlit a third season of the series, which will be called Secret History: Lore and Legends, which will again be a bit of a swerve compared to the first two seasons. It will focus on Indigenous lore but will also include explorations of “ancient astronaut theories, enigmatic phenomena and mainstream beliefs about human origins.” Black Antelope says he hopes to begin production in Alberta in 2025.
“A lot of these stories that we have in Indigenous culture, there is a lot of truth to them,” Black Antelope says. “There are some that are just pure entertainment, but with other ones, there was actually a lot of fact in what they have been told. It blurs the lines between myth and reality.”
It’s just one of many projects Black Antelope has either recently finished, is currently working on or is in development. Of Cree and Irish descent, he grew up in Southern Alberta near the Kainai (Blood) and Piikani Blackfoot Reserves.
“I’m not Blackfoot by blood, I’m Cree-Metis by blood but I don’t know my real family, I just know their names and the people where I’m from,” he says. “But I was adopted into a Blackfoot family and I was taught and raised in Blackfoot principles and culture so that’s why I identify as Blackfoot.”
His entry into the arts was through music. He toured Canada under the adopted name Julian Schamp but was encouraged at one point to find work as an extra while in Vancouver. It wasn’t until he was in his mid-30s that he realized acting could be his career.
“I think the first set I was on was Stargate SG-1, which was pretty mind-blowing,” he says. “I thought it was a pretty neat way to hang out, make a couple of bucks. I got a couple of close-to-speaking roles out there but didn’t really think much of it, I was more focused on music. I didn’t get into acting before I came back here to Alberta. I had a choice of going to work in the oilfields or driving two hours to make ten bucks an hour on a set doing background. I chose that one.”
It soon led to meatier roles. From the mid-2000s onward, Black Antelope began securing work on projects such as Into the West, Hannah’s Law, Penny Dreadful and Arctic Air. His breakthrough came when he was cast in a memorable but villainous role in the series Blackstone, followed by parts in The Flash, Prey, Joe Pickett and Tribal. He landed a role in the adaptation of Esi Edugyen’s award-winning novel Washington Black and a lead in Netflix’s ill-fated comic-book series Grendel, which the streaming giant recently shelved. In theatres, Black Antelope was most recently seen as a biker in Deaner ’89 starring fellow Calgarian Paul Spence.
As of last week, Black Antelope was in Los Angeles filming NCIS: Origins, the sixth instalment of the popular franchise that is a prequel to the original series and set in 1991. It chronicles the younger years of Leroy Jethro Gibbs, the character played by Mark Harmon in the original. Black Antelope portrays chief medical examiner Kai Blackrock. It’s a recurring role and he will appear in at least six episodes. The series debuts Oct. 14 on Global.
“It’s something that normally I wouldn’t be cast in, I guess you could say that’s the way I’m pigeonholed in this industry,” Black Antelope says. “But it’s quite interesting. There is a lot of medical terminology. The whole idea is kind of like an Indigenous Quincy.”
Playing an Indigenous doctor is not only against-type for the actor, it’s a rarity in general on TV screens.
“Especially one who is sitting at the top: he’s the boss,” Black Antelope says. “Back in 1991, he would have had quite a hard climb up that ladder to get up there. I love the fact that (CBS) chose to put this character in that position.”
Ensuring Indigenous participation in the industry continues to be a passion for Black Antelope. He founded Pathfinders Film Institute in 2023 as a way to offer paid training opportunities to Indigenous Albertans who want to get into the industry.
Starting in November, the two-week program will be launched on the Stoney Nakoda Nation in partnership with Calgary Economic Development. The idea is to certify 20 to 40 people and find job placements for at least 20 of them as technicians. There could be immediate work as The Abandons, a Netflix western series, is currently being shot in that area.
“They are shooting out there over the next few years,” he says. “So we want to get local people trained who can go to work and be certified.”
Secret History: Women Warriors is currently airing on APTN. NCIS: Origins airs Oct. 14 on Global, CBS and Paramount Prime.