Biography for
Tantoo Cardinal More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

20 July 1950, Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada

Birth Name

Rose Marie Cardinal

Spouse

John Lawlor	(1988 - March 2000) (divorced) 1 child
Fred Martin	(1968 - 1976) (divorced) 1 child

Trivia

She is "métis," the French cognate of Spanish "mestizo," indicating a person of mixed American Aboriginal and European ancestry (usually an Algonquian ethnic group and a Celtic and/or French ethnic group). Cardinal is Cree and French.

In 1993 she received an honorary degree from the University of Rochester.

Daughter with husband John Lawlor, Riel. She was named after Louis Riel, the Métis father of Manitoba (which originated as a quasi-independent Métis nation, of which Riel was the first and only president).

Other children, Cheynne and Clifford

Was member of the dramatic jury at the Sundance Film Festival in 1994.

Actor Beaver Richards is the father of her son Clifford.

Native activism was reaching its height in the late 60s and early 1970s when she began experimenting with acting. As a young actress, Cardinal began her career with a docudrama for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) and in productions for the Alberta Native Communications Society.

Learned Lakota for the Academy Award-winning film, Dances with Wolves (1990).

Received many awards in recognition of her acting accomplishments and her dedication to the native community, including: the Best Actress Award at the American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco; the Theatrical Sterling Award for Best Actress in "All My Relations" (1990); the Native Indian Film Festival's Eagle Spirit Award for lifetime contribution to the native artistic community; and an Outstanding Achievement award from the Toronto chapter of Women in Film and Television (WIFT). She also accepted the Sun Hill Award for Excellence in Native American Filmmaking.

Performed in a series of one-hour documentaries called "As Long as the Rivers Flow," about Native Canadians' drive for self-government.

She married Fred Martin following high school graduation. The marriage suffered by her strong social activism which for the most part took her away from her husband and son Cheyenne. The marriage ended in 1976 and Fred went on to raise their son.

Born in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, the first child of of a Metis woman named Julia Cardinal, she was raised by her maternal Cree grandmother in Anzac, Alberta (her step-grandfather was English).

Personal Quotes

We had no TV where I grew up in my community in northern Canada, and the only images of native people that I was exposed to were my family and my relatives; these were wonderful and strong individuals whom I looked up to. It was only when I moved to Edmonton in Alberta in 1965, that I saw a different kind of image that was prevalent in Canadian society at that time, a negative image of native peoples as having no fixed address, and of being somehow 'lesser than.' Acting for me was a way to redress this imbalance; acting allows me to present a different kind of truth, to bring some light back into the stories of our history.

Life in the business is also highly challenging. Sometimes you are dissatisfied, it's difficult sometimes. You're always thinking of how it could be better. It's a 20-legged race, you don't work alone. There are so many others working to tell the same story. We as Indian artists don't have the luxury of being individuals. We represent ages and ages. The work of an artist is a highly responsible one."

I got into acting through my political involvement, through a sense of justice. I wanted to see things change, to offset some of the lies that have been told about us throughout history. The attitude of the public back in the '60s was so backward and ill-informed. By the time I found out about our history and how we were treated, I was in a rage. It was really a time of darkness and great frustration. There was an incredible wall we had to get through." ...[The] Canadian Content Rule, which came into existence in the mid 1960s, was the beginning to opening doors and minds. It resulted in producers actually casting real Native people to play Native roles.