WMC News & Features

Tantoo Cardinal breaks new ground for indigenous women in television

Wmc Features Tantoo Cardinal Photo Credit  Howard J Davis 120419
Tantoo Cardinal has appeared in more than 120 film and television projects. (Photo by Howard J. Davis)

Stumptown was first a comic book series, written by Greg Rucka and illustrated by Matthew Southworth and Justin Greenwood. Rucka has a track record of creating strong, diverse female characters, and in the new TV adaptation of Stumptown, by writer/producer Jason Richman, not only is the lead a complicated female military war vet with PTSD (played by Cobie Smulders) but also, for the first time in a U.S. television series, an indigenous woman is part of the main cast, spotlighted in a regular role.

Tantoo Cardinal, an award-winning actress of Métis/First Nations descent, plays Sue Lynn Blackbird, the CEO of a tribal casino in Portland, Oregon. Stumptown is a nickname for Portland that harkens back to a period in the mid-19th century when growth was happening at such a rapid pace that the stumps of trees were being left behind as the city rose around them.

But Stumptown, which airs on ABC, is situated in present-day Oregon and portrays a contemporary indigenous culture in the region. Cardinal has been doing her part, throughout a long, successful career, to bring truth to portrayals of the experience of indigenous people of North America, in both film and TV. No matter how small the part, Cardinal has felt this to be her duty.

To date, Cardinal has appeared in over 120 film and television projects. Her credits include such films as Legends of the Fall, Dances with Wolves, and Black Robe as well as numerous television credits for shows such as Westworld, Outlander, Longmire, and Godless, among others. Sometimes the scripts are truer to life, and sometimes they veer toward stereotypical depictions, but in either case Cardinal has always been clear about the big picture, the larger role she’s playing. Acting and activism, to her, have always been one and the same. 

From Los Angeles, where she now lives full time, Cardinal explains: “I’ve played a lot of women, and I try to empower every character I play. I think the difference with Sue Lynn is that her empowerment is right in there. I don’t have to sneak it in or bring it to work in a bag. It’s addressed. Her power is addressed in where she is, in being a CEO of the company and a power in the community.”

The character of Blackbird was featured in just book one of the comic books, but in the television series, she is a prominent, ongoing presence. Richman explains that he “was looking to build a world of TV characters we hadn’t seen before; [to] defy expectations. So the idea of writing [Blackbird] was inspiring to me. As I started to think about her character, she began to take on traits of some of the strong women in my own life.” Ultimately, he explains, “her character description read: Don Corleone meets Angela Merkel meets your grandmother — which seemed to cover all her shades.” 

As a Women’s Media Center article pointed out, before this year there had never been a television series in the United States starring a Native woman. Sivan Alyra Rose became the first Native American woman to act in a lead role on the short-lived Netflix series Chambers. With her role in Stumptown, it’s possible that Cardinal could be part of a compelling shift. “These are times we’re bringing our worlds together,” she says. “Sue Lynn comes from a world that is real and is mixing in with another world that is real, and that’s kind of interesting.” She adds: “The thing that Stumptown has going on is the women that are in the forefront.”

Richman recognizes the significance of this moment. “At heart, [Blackbird] is a character who is active. Never a victim. More than anything, I was looking to make her an extremely complicated, sometimes ruthless, but ultimately an honorable force in the show. I hadn’t seen those traits in an indigenous character on broadcast television. This characterization felt very modern and honest and conveyed a specific sense of place.”

He also recognizes the responsibility of authentically fleshing out such a character. “If we were touching issues in that space, we wanted to be accurate,” he says. “Sue Lynn Blackbird is someone who has seen an enormous amount of injustice, and sometimes she has to fight dirty to play fair.” To tackle this nuanced life experience, he has brought in an indigenous consultant, Dr. Joely Proudfit, who is chair and professor of American Indian Studies and director of the California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center at California State University San Marcos.

Proudfit supports the production and art in all respects from story, to set design, to clothing, and everything in between, advising on cultural sensitivity and authenticity. “Just like some shows have inspired haircuts, fashion…I welcome the opportunity to expose our presence and storytelling, to offer an impact on popular culture on our own terms,” says Proudfit, who is also the founder and executive director of California’s American Indian & Indigenous Film Festival. “I am actively engaged with the writing team. It’s a truly collaborative effort, and I appreciate their willingness to listen, learn, and expand their writing horizons.”

The year 2018 was monumental for Cardinal. While shooting the pilot for Stumptown, she was also celebrating the release of Falls Around Her, which was written and directed by Canadian indigenous filmmaker Darlene Naponse. In the film she plays Mary Birchbark, an internationally famous First Nations musician who returns to her reserve to reconnect with the land and to her community. In the span of her career, some 48 years, this was Cardinal’s first starring role in a feature film.

Naponse explains the importance of indigenous people, especially women, controlling their own narrative: “For too long we have watched indigenous women in others’ perspective. This story is told within [Birchbark’s] community and her indigenous perspective, making her character stronger and based within her community. We wanted to push audiences to see the beauty of indigenous women and allow space for sensuality and sexuality.”

During a masterclass interview at the 2018 Toronto Film Festival, Cardinal emphasized the importance of indigenous representation in film, amid the backdrop of cultural genocide, through her earliest memory of seeing people who looked and spoke like her on the big screen. She explained that she and her family lived “in the bush,” and the only films she saw, growing up in northern Alberta, Canada, were those brought in by Government Forest Services. Occasionally she’d accompany her mother and grandmother to nearby Fort McMurry, where she’d spend her money at the movie theater. It was there that she recalled seeing a film featuring characters unlike anything she’d ever seen. They were code talkers, and they were speaking a language taught to her by her grandmother. It was Cree. (During World War II, Cree code talkers used the Cree language to encrypt classified communications.) Cardinal explained to the audience what it was like to see, for the first time, indigenous faces on the big screen: “That was really influential, when I saw anything that had to do with us, it really inspired me in some kind of way.”

Now, with Stumptown, Cardinal feels she is taking a “valuable journey because there is the opportunity to work with audiences that may be brand new. It’s not speaking to the choir, in a sense. It’s an opportunity to talk to people who might not even really think about our world very much. 

From her first experience seeing indigenous actors on screen to playing the layered character that is Sue Lynn Blackbird, on a hit televisions series, Cardinal has been on an exceptional journey. Actor, playwright, and activist DeLanna Studi has devoted her career to advancing Native actors and dispelling stereotypes. She is the current chair of the SAG-AFTRA National Native Americans Committee. (Her uncle, Wes Studi, this year became the first Native American actor to receive an Oscar.) She is quick to place Cardinal’s role in context while paying tribute to Cardinal and indigenous women as a whole: “While it is still a Native role confined within the most recent trope, the Native casino, Cardinal portrays the casino’s CEO, a role usually written for Native men. Tantoo, once again, portrays Native women as I know them, capturing our dignity, grace, and our complexity. Tantoo Cardinal is taking our Native women out of the past and placing us where we rightfully belong, up front, in positions of power, and most importantly, without apology.”

Correction: This article was updated to include the fact that Sivan Alyra Rose was the first Native American woman in a lead role on a U.S. television series.



More articles by Category: Arts and culture, Media
More articles by Tag: Native American, Television
SHARE

[SHARE]

Article.DirectLink

Contributor
Categories
Sign up for our Newsletter

Learn more about topics like these by signing up for Women’s Media Center’s newsletter.