Mo Brings Plenty was awarded the New Horizons Award at the Wrangler Awards for the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum April 13th in Oklahoma City.
Mo Brings Plenty is an enrolled Lakota who hails from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. His traditional name — given to him as a young boy — is Ta Sunke Wospapi (“catches his horse”); it befits a man who spends more time on his horses than anywhere else. As a Makes Room on his mother’s side and a Brings Plenty on his father’s, he is the stock of his grandfathers who fought at the Battle at Little Big Horn. Those familiar with the battle will know the strengths of those names and understand why Mo sees the world through the lens of the forces and sacrifices his family and ancestors made so that he could be here today. His relatives long passed are an intrinsic part of everything he does: every decision he makes and everywhere he goes.
As an actor, Mo is best known in his self-titled role as “Mo Brings Plenty,” Chief Thomas Rainwater’s enforcer on the Taylor Sheridan/ViacomCBS record-breaking juggernaut series Yellowstone. Moviegoers can now catch him playing “Shep Wauneka” in the newly released Jurassic World Dominion (2022) and as “Ottawa Jones” in Showtime’s Peabody award-winning limited series The Good Lord Bird (2021). He has played “Crazy Horse,” “Sitting Bull,” and many other historical Indian notables who have solidified their place in this Country’s history. And he has spent a fair amount of time in the biopic world twice portraying Charlie Soap — the husband of the first woman elected Chief of the Cherokee Nation, the late Wilma Mankiller– in The Cherokee Word for Water and Gloria Steinem’s The Glorias, respectively.
Mo Brings Plenty is an actor, horse stunt rider, rancher, and American Indian storyline consultant. But above all, he is a man who wholeheartedly believes in human kindness, and he trusts the good in humanity still exists and feels it just needs to be dusted off a bit. Out of respect and honor for those who have come before us, Mo knows we have a profound obligation to leave a livable planet for those who will follow after we are gone, and he starts and ends every day, with thoughts of how he and we can make the world a better place while we are here.
When Mo isn’t working as an actor, he can be found ranching or seeking ways to give back to his Lakota communities and Indian Country — ways that include preserving culture, tradition and seeking cultural truth in diversity.
