Rose Marie "Tantoo" Cardinal CM (born July 20, 1950) is a Canadian actress of Cree and Métis heritage. In 2009, she was made a member of the Order of Canada "for her contributions to the growth and development of Aboriginal performing arts in Canada, as a screen and stage actress, and as a founding member of the Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company."^[1]

Rose Marie "Tantoo"^[2] Cardinal was born the youngest of three children to Julia Cardinal, a woman of Cree and Métis descent, and a white father.

Cardinal was raised in the hamlet of Anzac, Alberta. The lack of electricity inspired her to use her imagination while playing in the bush. Her grandmother nicknamed her "Tantoo" after the insect repellent they used while picking blueberries together. She taught Cardinal the Cree language, the traditional ways of their culture and the difficulties she would face growing up Métis in Canada. Cardinal has said that it was walking behind her grandmother where she first learned to act.^[2][3][4]

Cardinal has played roles in many notable films and television series, including Spirit Bay, Loyalties, Dances with Wolves, Black Robe, Legends of the Fall, Smoke Signals, Hold the Dark and North of 60. She was cast in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation mini-series By Way of the Stars with Gordon Tootoosis as the Cree Chief and Eric Schweig as Black Thunder.

In 2009, she was made a member of the Order of Canada "for her contributions to the growth and development of Aboriginal performing arts in Canada, as a screen and stage actress, and as a founding member of the Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company".^[1]

On August 23, 2011, Cardinal, Margot Kidder, and dozens of others were arrested while protesting the proposed extension of the Keystone Pipeline.^[5]

In 2012, she performed the role of Regan in an all-aboriginal production of William Shakespeare's King Lear at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, alongside a cast that also included August Schellenberg as Lear, Billy Merasty as Gloucester, Jani Lauzon in a dual role as Cordelia and the Fool, and Craig Lauzon as Kent.^[6]

She played Marilyn Yarlott for three seasons as a recurring cast member in the Netflix series Longmire, a Crow hunter and medicine woman who lives alone in the vast wilderness of the Crow reservation.

In 2017 she was named the winner of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television's Earle Grey Award for lifetime achievement.^[7] She has also won a Gemini Award, a National Aboriginal Achievement Award (now Indspire Award) and was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame.^[2]

In the 2018 film The Grizzlies, she plays a high school principal who is skeptical that a first-time teacher can address social issues in the northwestern Nunavut community of Kugluktuk.

On November 26, 2021, along with other laureates, she received the "Governor General's Performing Arts Awards after a nearly two-year delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic".^[8]

Cardinal met her first husband, Fred Martin, while boarding at his family's home during her high school years in Edmonton. They were married from 1968 to 1978 and had a son, Cheyenne, prior to their divorce.

She had her second son, Clifford, with Beaver Richards.

From 1988 to 2000, Cardinal was married to actor John Lawlor, with whom she had a daughter, Riel.^[2]

• Notable Aboriginal people of Canada