WILLISTON When “The Revenant,” the story of fur trapper Hugh Glass, opens in theaters across the county today, moviegoers will see the work of a North Dakota man in it.

Loren Yellow Bird Sr., cultural resource interpreter and park ranger at Fort Union National Historic Site southwest of Williston, was technical adviser for the movie that stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Glass.

Yellow Bird is a member of the Arikara tribe, one of the three tribes comprising the Three Affiliated Tribes on the Fort Berthold Reservation. He spent the majority of his growing years at White Shield, home of the Arikara, and has college degrees in history and anthropology.

Yellow Bird got involved in the movie after responding to an email from a friend when movie people were asking for an open cast call for Native American actors. “The only thing I have ever done was some things to promote state tourism,” he said. He submitted a resume, although it was a day late for the deadline.

As it turned out, the movie’s personnel discovered Yellow Bird is an Arikara, knew the Arikara language and also has frontier skills. They flew him to Calgary, Alberta, to the movie filming site and he was hired as a technical adviser. In this capacity, he spent much time with “The Revenant” director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, lead actor DiCaprio and others participating in the movie project.

Yellow Bird’s voice is used in the movie and the Native American languages being spoken mainly are his product, as well as advising on costumes, battles and a number of other items.

“The Arikara is what they hired me to do,” Yellow Bird said. He also helped with other languages.

“The primary languages that are spoken in the film are English, Arikara, Pawnee and French,” he said. “I had to teach the French how to speak Arikara, which was kind of fun. Their English was broken up and then they had to take on another language.” He said they did well, though. The movie has a number of Native American actors in it who are from Canada.

Forrest Goodluck, 17, of Albuquerque, N.M., who is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes and also a member of the Navaho and Tsimshian tribes, plays Glass’ son Hawk in the movie. Goodluck’s maternal grandmother is Dorothy Atkinson, originally from Elbowoods and an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes, according to his great-aunt Marilyn Hudson of Parshall.

Yellow Bird worked with the actors just before they went on set. “So I didn’t get to see the actual dialogue take place on set because I had to get back to my job here (Fort Union),” he said.

“Later on they got me down to LA after the post-production so we went over the language a lot more,” he said. He also sat in on editing sessions and to hear the French speakers. “We did voice-over too, so my voice is on there I think twice at least once,” he said.

Yellow Bird was at the filming in September, October and November 2014 and then was flown back in 2015 for some work in January and February, and again in July. Other times he continued to help the filming personnel with language from North Dakota.

Most of the filming was done west of Calgary. “At one point they flew us over to British Columbia to an area called Squamish,” where they also did some work, he said.

“That last summer they were still trying to finish but they were having issues with snow. There was not enough snow and they were having problems with that,” he said. Yellow Bird was asked to join the film team in Argentina where the last part of the scenes were done, but he was not able to be there.

During the filming, Yellow Bird worked closely with DiCaprio. “Everybody didn’t get to have as many conversations with him as I did,” Yellow Bird said.

“He was very professional,” Yellow Bird said of DeCaprio. “He definitely had an interest in the culture, the history. He sympathized with the story lines in terms of the Native culture. The undertones of the film were to show that these trappers are coming in and just taking everything, just destroying the environment and making the Native culture having to change… Of course, he’s an environmentalist so he had some kind of connection that way to jump into it. We’d visit about some of that.”

Yellow Bird has not seen the entire movie yet, but he’s anxious for the release of the film ” because it’s about the Arikara, it’s about us,” he said.

“Maybe it will give an introduction to people to get some interest not just on Arikara but every tribe in the country,” Yellow Bird said. “That was the feeling of a number of the actors. They weren’t Arikara but they wanted to do their best to make sure that portraying the Arikara they’ll do the best they can, and I appreciated that.”

He said DiCaprio and others involved in the project also wanted to do the best that they could. “He (DiCaprio) even said that to me that if I see things in the script that weren’t good or appropriate and I felt could be or should be changed, to let him know and he’ll get to it. Those were good words from him,” Yellow Bird said.