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'When I started, we were dead people': Tantoo Cardinal on bringing nuanced Indigenous stories to the screen
To understand the legacy and trajectory of Tantoo Cardinal's renowned acting career, you really have to understand the cultural context she was born into.
"I was born only [five] years after Emily Carr passed away," the Indigenous icon tells Q 's Tom Power in an interview. "If you look at her work, it's all about the dying culture and the dead Indian…. So when I started, we were dead people."
By the time Cardinal landed her first professional acting role in 1971, she says there was "massive ignorance" about Indigenous peoples across Canada. Fueled by rage, she turned to acting and storytelling as a form of resistance.
"I understood the power of stories," Cardinal says. "Those stories had to be changed to empower ourselves to decolonize … to get back to the origins of who we are."
In 1986, Cardinal moved to Los Angeles to find more work. That's where she landed a career-changing role in the Oscar-winning film Dances With Wolves, opposite Kevin Costner and Graham Greene. For a lot of people, Dances With Wolves was the first time they saw Indigenous people being represented in a way that highlighted their humanity.
"There was a lot of magic surrounding that movie and I knew that it was significant," Cardinal says. "It was going to be in a Native language and then I asked them, 'Could you use a language where there are some materials, so that the actors have something that they can use to learn what the language is? … So that's how Lakota became the language that they used."
Recently, Cardinal was honoured with the Equity in Entertainment Award at The Hollywood Reporter's Women in Entertainment Canada gala in Toronto. The award recognizes the Canadian acting legend's tireless work to bring authenticity, accuracy and nuance to Indigenous stories.
When she looks back on her career now, Cardinal can see how her advocacy helped lay the groundwork for greater Indigenous representation today.
"There's no turning back," she says.
