It seems that every article about Tantoo Cardinal begins with a long list of her accomplishments and accolades—the 120-plus film and television titles on her IMDb page, her Indspire Award and Governor General’s Performing Arts Award and the fact that she is a Member of the Order of Canada and has been inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame—or her age. (She’s 74, if you’re curious.)

Don’t get me wrong. She more than deserves the recognition—for knocking down doors when it comes to Indigenous representation, diversifying her talents to do voice work and perform onstage and, importantly, being really good at her job—but I’m not sure that it brings her much delight. During our one-hour video call, the Cree and Metis actor radiates joy most when she’s talking about the acting academy she started in Alberta.

Tap Root Actors Academy launched in 2021 and is located on the Kikino Metis Settlement, a location that was carefully chosen by Cardinal as she wanted to see Metis stories portrayed by Metis people. “In the 50 years that I’ve been in the business, I couldn’t fill one hand with the Metis characters I’ve been asked to play,” she says. “This Canadian mosaic that we’re all so proud of is way off balance. They’re all thinking ‘First Nations,’ and that’s important. Inuit and Metis are important too. So I thought my time [would] be well spent if I [set up in] a Metis community.”

Cardinal, who is from Alberta, had long sat on the idea of starting an acting school, her own experiences having shown her how beneficial acting can be for Indigenous communities. Theatre and moviemaking, she’d come to realize, have the power to give agency to storytellers and the potential to create proper representation for the generations that follow. “From the first time I stepped onto a feature-film set, I’ve looked around in this industry and seen the hard work and creation going on,” she says. “And I thought [Indigenous people] know how to work long hours—in the dark, the rain and the cold. We have that survival mechanism.” Today, a small team of Metis and First Nations talents—makeup, directing, acting and education professionals—bring their expertise to summer and winter workshops at Tap Root.

Cardinal says that even though it’s an acting academy, the kids who attend learn so much more. “To be an actor, it’s best if you’re well informed about all the aspects [of filmmaking] how the camera works, how lighting works, the reason for [certain] sets and blocking and even wardrobe and makeup,” she says.

In just the past few years, the program’s output included several short films that premiered at imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto, the Edmonton International Film Festival and New Zealand’s Māoriland Film Festival. “There are all kinds of success stories,” says Cardinal. “[On] the first day, there [were] people who couldn’t even speak [and were] hiding behind their hair, [and now they’re] onstage playing the fiddle on National Indigenous Peoples Day.”

“She commands attention, and she’s just so cool—she’s a bad bitch. Watching the early Tantoo stuff and seeing her journey is, I think, the greatest master class you’ll ever see in terms of an Indigenous actor who started where she started and is where she is now. ”

Cardinal even enlisted Jillian Dion, her co-star in the Martin Scorsese-directed Killers of the Flower Moon (Cardinal played Lizzie Q, the matriarch of four Osage daughters, one of whom was played by Dion), to teach acting. The Plains Cree, Metis and French-Canadian actor is in her second year of leading a class and says that it was a no-brainer to accept the offer—the school is located in the same territory that she was raised in—and her experiences there have been incredibly fulfilling. “It really reminds [me] of why we make art and why Indigenous people [have been] storytellers since the beginning of recorded time,” she says. “We had the kids get involved with the whole acting process, and then their parents got involved soon after. It’s so wonderful and touching to see a community really come together—especially the Indigenous community, a Metis community—through art and expression.”

It’s also beautiful that Dion and Cardinal have continued their relationship since leaving the Killers set. Dion recalls watching Cardinal’s work over the years and remembers how, early on, the older actor sought her out since she was also a Cree and Metis actor and gifted her a dress. “She commands attention, and she’s just so cool—she’s a bad bitch,” says Dion. “Watching the early Tantoo stuff and seeing her journey is, I think, the greatest master class you’ll ever see in terms of an Indigenous actor who started where she started and is where she is now.”

Creating a space for other Indigenous actors is something Cardinal has been doing since her earliest roles in the 1980s and 1990s (like in Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves and historical drama Black Robe), taking it on as a responsibility alongside a then very small group of Indigenous acting peers, such as Graham Greene, Wes Studi and Irene Bedard.

But now, with big, buzzy Indigenous-led or Indigenous starring television series and movies—like Disney+ Marvel series Echo, the animated children’s Netflix show Spirit Rangers (both of which Cardinal appears in) and the acclaimed FX dramedy Reservation Dogs—making waves, it seems like the progress the actor has been waiting for is finally happening. (We’re both cautious in our optimism, however, since Cardinal only had her first starring role in 2018’s Falls Around Her.)

This rise of other Indigenous actors, like Lily Gladstone (who worked with Cardinal on Killers), Devery Jacobs (who worked with her on Echo) and Kiawentiio (who’s in Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender), has allowed Cardinal to feel freer when making choices in her career. She no longer feels obligated to keep Indigenous representation at the forefront. “All these years, I’ve been in service to talking about our world and talking about our community as best I could,” she says. “I felt a commitment because we didn’t have very many people out there. Now that there are so many people out there doing all kinds of things [in the industry], I’ve got no responsibility. I can go and do what I want to do.”

These days, she’s moving forward with roles that speak to her creatively. Recently, she took on a part in an indie film adaptation (which was so small that it needed a Kickstarter to get it made) of the Tony-winning George Bernard Shaw play, Major Barbara, because she wanted to work with director Jay Craven again; she had worked with him before, on 1993’s Where the Rivers Flow North, and views him as a brother. “This was the first call that came in after I really solidified that decision,” she says. “And so, of course, I’m still Indian [in it], but it’s a wider story and it [depicts] a festering in society. Gary [Farmer] and I are partners in this film, and it’s a bit of a comedy.”

 

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New opportunities and collaborations are continuing to arise, both within and outside the industry. Lately, Cardinal has also been walking runways—at Santa Fe’s Native Fashion Week and Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week, for example—in the Patricia Michaels dress that was custom-made for her for the Killers of the Flower Moon red-carpet premiere in Cannes. “It’s an act of resilience to get dressed beautifully and go out there in public and see what Patricia made and see what Red Berry Woman made and see what [other] designers are doing,” she says.

When asked what she’s looking forward to in the future, she lists off a few things: writing her own book, getting a solar-powered building on the academy’s land and securing a funding source for Tap Root students to travel to film sets and theatres. I note that nothing she said related to her own acting career. She’s more than happy with that.

Instead, she’d rather talk about her investment in the younger generations. “I trust that the fire burns in so many of our youth,” she says. “[If I’m] able to encourage it and give it a place to breathe, that’s power for our communities—[it will] make them healthier and keep them busy.”

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