Woman whose voice was used in The Revenant got no screen credit or money

A little more than halfway through the Oscar-winning Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Revenant, a voice recites a poem in a Native American language.

In the scene, Hikuc, a Pawnee portrayed by Arthur Redcloud, is building a shelter for DiCaprio’s frontiersman, Hugh Glass.

But the lines of poetry are recited not in the Plains Indian Pawnee dialect, but in the Inupiaq language of Arctic Alaska, and the voice, it has emerged, is that of Doreen Nutaaq Simmonds, a Fairbanks, Alaska, resident who had no inkling that a recording of her would be used in the film – which has grossed millions and earned 12 Oscar nominations, winning best director and best actor.

Simmonds, 69, said that her son had pointed out that it was her voice while they were watching the film.

“I was so engrossed in what the Indian was doing that I hadn’t paid attention,” Simmonds told the Alaska Dispatch News. “But then I started listening more closely. My son said, ‘That’s you, Mom.’ That’s when my ears opened.”

Once she realized it was her voice, Simmonds said she was shocked, the paper reports. She did not earn any money for the use of her voice in the $135m film, and did not receive a screen credit.

The audio of Simmonds reciting the poem, written by a Canadian Inuit, initially appeared in a recording of John Luther Adams’ Earth and the Great Weather.

“The track was a pre-existing musical track from 1994 licensed from John Luther Adams/New World Music who granted us the rights,” a representative for 20th Century Fox, distributor of The Revenant, told the Guardian.

The Alaska Dispatch News reported that Simmonds was not sure of the terms of any agreement she had signed regarding the recording 27 years ago.

The poem’s opening lines are: “Tagiuqpaum sagvagaanja / Arjalatkaanja ivigaatun / Sagvaqsiqsuatun kuukpagmi.”

An English translation is: “The great sea has set me adrift. It moves me like a weed in a great river.”