The Coach Was Unique
More than a quarter of Blake’s script had to be translated into the Sioux Lakota tongue as the film developed. While some people would have preferred to save the hassle and have everything communicated in English, this was not the case here. One of the most pressing concerns was that few individuals still spoke Lakota, let alone knew it well enough to translate it. Despite this, Costner was able to locate Doris Leader Charge, a Lakota language instructor at South Dakota’s Sinte Gleska University. He mailed the screenplay to her, and she finished it in three weeks. She later worked as the dialect coach for the production and even played Pretty Shield, Chief Ten Bears’ wife. Discover which characters were based on real people!
The Coach Was Unique