LA bounty hunter brings toys to Pine Ridge powwow

PINE RIDGE— For over a quarter century Brian Uptgraft has been delivering toys to Indian reservations, the latest being the Pine Ridge Reservation, and if you had to guess who he was and how he got involved playing Santa Klaus, you would probably never guess correctly.

“I’m a bounty hunter in Los Angeles,” Uptgraft said. “How I started delivering toys was in 1992, one of my friends, she was a dancer at Knott’s Berry Farm, and she’s Navajo. She knew what I did for a living, and she came up to me one time, and she said, ‘Hey, Brian, can you do me a favor, my parents livestock is disappearing on the rez,’ and she wanted me to go there and try to find out what was going on. So, I said, okay, I can take off for a couple of weeks and go and check it out.”

Uptgraft didn’t realize it at the time, but he was about to step into a world he did not yet know existed.

“I met a Navajo police officer and he took me to Four Corners,” Uptgraft said, “and I met a family that was living in a house with no electricity and running water. Me, being a boy from California, I thought Native Americans were paid by the government, because they were wards of the government. Casinos weren’t involved at that time. I found out they had to go a couple of blocks to go to a pump to get water. I thought, man, this is just not right, when there’s a power plant right across that is supplying power to everybody else. So, that year I went back home, I bought a couple of generators and some lanterns, blankets. I got some clothes donated, some toys, and I went back, and gave ‘em to them to the people.”

That went smoothly enough, Uptgraft had no reason to assume the next year would be any different.

“The second year I went and took toys up there,” Uptgraft said, “but because I had a U-Haul I couldn’t make the road because the road was very small and it was winter time. So, I left it in Window Rock, asking them to take it up to Four Corners, and they said yes…well, it never got up to Four Corners. So, I said, okay, I won’t do that again.”

Uptgraft was about to make his first reservation change: “I went to the Crow Reservation, and I did one year, and had an incident there, which wasn’t the fault of the tribal chair, but it happened…so, then I was introduced to Fort Washakie (Wind River Reservation in Wyoming). I took toys to Fort Washakie for twelve years, every year at Christmas, out of my own money— the U-Haul, the gas, the rooms, everything I did I did out of my own money…and I was real excited for that next year to come, because it made me feel good. I don’t have kids, I am not married, and I deal with negative people with my work every day, so me doing this, it was very rewarding to me, as much as for the kids, seeing these kids’ faces light up to get these toys.”

Twelve years on one reservation, engaged in such a self-motivated act of charity and kindness is pretty impressive. Had he stopped there, Uptgraft would have already done far more than most people could have predicted or expected, but then he met Chico: “After 12 years, I thought, I need to move on to another reservation, and I met Chico Her Many Horses over there at Fort Washakie, and he says, ‘Hey, why not Pine Ridge?’ So, I started taking toys around Christmas time to Pine Ridge. I been doing Pine Ridge, this is my sixth year. I didn’t make it up this last Christmas because I had a rollover accident with work, and I got hurt.”

Obviously, being a bounty hunter in one of the largest cities in the world can be a dangerous job. One thing being in Los Angeles does, is bring Uptgraft into contact with the entertainment industry. He is currently producing three reality TV shows and has a scripted program in the hopper, based upon his experiences as a bounty hunter, but with a Native American in the lead role. In August, 2012, Uptgraft started Blazing a Trail, and he explained what that is: “In taking the toys to the kids on the reservation, I met a lot of very talented kids, singing, dancing. Talking to a lot of kids, they told me there were no art programs on the reservation, no theater, arts, acting, music, things like this, so, in 2012, I started a nonprofit called Blazing a Trail, where I was working on bringing arts to kids on the reservation, teach them how to become writers, producers, directors and actors.”

Uptgraft said a “big chunk” of the profits from his three reality shows will go to fund Blazing a Trail, to start a program where Native Americans are hired as interns to “teach them preproduction and postproduction.”

This year’s trip to Pine Ridge, coming off last year’s missed trip because of the rollover accident, ran into some snags: “I was going to use a motorhome, but the person who was loaning me the motorhome had some engine problems with it, so I had to stuff the toys in my SUV, and then I came down here and I went to Walmart and bought another $500 worth of toys.”

Distributing them at the Pow Wow was just a question of letting the toddlers pick first, and then the next older group, and so on. Uptgraft had never been to so large a powwow, and said that back in California they end at five, but at this one he kept going until the wee hours of the morning, which wore him out.

“Somebody told me,” Uptgraft said, “if you ever want to feel young, hang around young kids, if you ever want to feel old, try and keep up with them.”

It doesn’t look like Uptgraft will be moving on to the next reservation in the near future: “I have kind of adopted Pine Ridge. My heart belongs to these kids. On Pine Ridge I see a lot of very good people, who are struggling, believe me, I wish I could do a lot more, and hopefully I’ll be able to do that.”

(Contact James Giago Davies at skindiesel@msn.com)

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