"Whatever happened to Ray Tracey?"
by Deenise Becenti

GALLUP - Channel surfing cable television can turn up the unexpected. A push of the remote brings up Neil Simon's Seems Like Old Times. There you see a native face, portraying a wayward youth. Seem like old times for sure, you think. You ask yourself, "Whatever happened to Ray Tracey?"
Ray Tracey is a Navajo actor turned entrepreneur, a partner in a multi-million dollar jewelry business with stores in Atlanta and Santa Fe. His jewelry is sold throughout the country and Japan. He's become a leading designer and manufacturer of native jewelry, employing dozens of native craftsmen. That's his life today.
More than 10 years ago, the story was different. His backdrop was Hollywood. Tracey, who lives in Albuquerque, says he didn't pursue acting. Acting found him. "Being an actor wasn't my first interest. I just had the look - the Indian look," Tracey said recently at his manufacting business in Gallup, New Mexico. It was handed to me - totally by accident."
In 1974, Keith Merrill, an Academy Award winning film producer, spotted Tracey on the campus of Utah's Brigham Young University (BYU). Merrill was casting for a documentary called Indian. The story was told and documented through the eyes of a young Indian as he traveled throughout Indian Country.
"He said to me ´You really look like an Indian´. My response was ´I guess I happen to be one´. That is how it all started." Tracey said. "I wasn't cut out to be an actor. I'm generally shy by nature so when he cast me for the part, I was scared stiff. After doing that project, I enjoyed it."
The enjoyment lasted for a year. Planning to pursue a college education in civil engineering, Tracey returned to BYU. Within months, talent scouts drove back on campus searching for "another young Indian". The project was Joe Panther, a story about a young man's struggle to find his place within traditional Seminole culture.
Tracey left the southwest and headed to Florida to work with a full length feature movie cast, including Brian Keith, Ricardo Montalban and A Martinez. The movie was finished aand released. Career plans changed. Tracey headed to Hollywood.
"After Joe Panther, I had offers to do other things," he said. "I figured that I might as well keep going in this business and moved to the west coast." Tracey's move to the heart of the movie industry was well-timed. The initiative in television was to feature episodes on minority issues. The work was consistent. The competition was limited.
"There weren' too many native actors back then," he said. "I can only think of three actors I had to read against - Michael Horse, Eloy Casados and Joseph Running Fox. We lost roles to each other."
Back then, Tracey sais, television episodes seemed to focus on one issue: sacred burial grounds. In the native industry, it was an inside joke. Ironically, the Indian vs. development encounter was his last role.
"Every single time, the part had to do with a young Indian trying to protect sacred burial grounds," he said. "I'd go to one audition, another sacred burial ground. I'd go to another interview, a sacred burial ground. Then another, a sacred burial ground."
"At my last interview, they gave me the basic scenario - a gym was to be built on some land and some Indians were opposed to it," Tracey said with a laugh. "I said - ´Oh, don't tell me. It's a sacred burial ground, right?´ I remember Michael (Horse) once saying ´Sacred burial ground, I could do it in my sleep´. That's the kind of stuff we were handed."
Tracey left Hollywood in the mid-1980s. In conjunction with his acting stint, he supported his family by designing and selling jewelry. He soon found it difficult to balance two professions. He was forced to make another career choice. It wasn't acting.
"I was trying to be an actor but I was not dedicating as much time to it as I should have. I didn't study or take acting classes. I spent a lot of time traveling across the country to jewelry shows. When I took an acting job, I'd get behind on my orders," he said. "Finally, I knew I had to make a choice."
"That was the toughest decition I had to ever make. It was hard for me emotionally, deciding at that early age in my life what career I would have for the rest of my life," he added. "I love the jewelry and I was interested in acting. I knew that I was a better jeweler than I was an actor. I needed to do what I did best."
"That was the time the actors strike hit. I figured that was the time to leave and go home," he said. "I got tired of keeping my weight down and eating all the right vegetables, eating no meat, no grease and no french fries."
Switching places, becoming a viewer, Tracey is impressed with the growing quality of native acting, particulary with Wes Studi and Graham Greene. At the time he made the decision to leave - six weeks and counting - he met Studi, who had just arrived on Hollywood ground. Little did he realize that in the years ahead, Studi would rise to the top of the native acting community.
"When I look back on that first meeting, I think ´Out with the old. In with the new´," he says, again with a laugh. "Both men (Study and Greene) have crossed that border that limits so many native actors. They have been cast in non-specific roles. It's a big, positive step for the native acting community."
Any regrets? Not really. Tracey is quite content with his life, his business and his decision. But there are times - like the two-hour drive between Gallup and Albuquerque - when he catches himself thinking, "What If?"
"I look back at the time when I gave it up. There was War Party and a few other projects. It was just the beginning of Dances With Wolves and War Party...
Yeah, I sometimes think how my life would have been different had I made the choice to stay in Hollywood," he said. "But then, BOOM, I'm back in reality. I remember I've got payroll this week."

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