Morrison’s future roles

The best example and a “notable exception” of a “Native … living in the future quite comfortably, particularly in sci-fi movies” would be Temuera Morrison, writes Peterborough Examiner columnist and award-winning Ojibwa author Drew Hayden Taylor, this in a modern world where only a “few aboriginal footprints wandering across the lunar landscape are, for the most part, moccasins worn by white astronauts.” Rotorua-born Morrison, 48, made his sci-fi debut in the Pamela Anderson Lee film Barb Wire, as her ex-husband, but is perhaps best known for his role as Jango Fett in the second instalment of the Star Wars trilogy. “I first became aware of [Maori cast in futuristic films] when I saw Pete Smith played the last living Maori (with two or three white people) in the cult film The Quiet Earth back in 1985. Then there was Cliff Curtis fighting an extra-terrestrial machine thing with just a Maori club (and a few guns) in the Jamie Lee Curtis movie Virus. He also made an appearance in a cool horror film called Deep Rising, where he fought a sea monster alongside Cherokee actor Wes Studi.” Morrison recently starred in the made for television film, The Immortal Voyage of Captain Drake as Don Sandovate.