The tall, lanky, Tantoo Cardinal is a metis, the term in Canada applying to those of mixed Native American and European descent. Raised among the Cree, she turned her political activism into an acting career that has included roles as the knowing wife of the Medicine Man in "Dances With Wolves" (1990), the poignant childless companion of Rip Torn in "Where the Rivers Flow North" (1993) and the mother of Brad Pitt's wife in "Legends of the Fall" (1994).

Cardinal was a leader of a youth group petitioning to get the Canadian government to build more schools on Indian reservations in the province