When it came to acting, you could say Chief Dan George—the first Native American ever nominated for an Academy Award in an acting category — was a late bloomer.
Born Geswanouth Slahoot on July 24, 1899, as a member of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation in North Vancouver, British Columbia, he was employed as a longshoreman in Vancouver Harbor for 27 years, served as chief of his people from 1951 to 1963, and traveled extensively throughout British Columbia with his children and other family members while performing as Dan George and His Indian Entertainers. At age 60, he was cast in the Canadian Broadcasting Company series Cariboo Country.
Although he was a complete novice in his new gig, George impressed critics and audiences with his portrayal of an elderly Indian named Ol’ Antoine, a role that had been originally cast with a white, a memoir he co-wrote with Hilda Mortimer, George required “four or five hours” of aging makeup each day he was on camera.) Not long after-ward, he inspired playwright George Ryga to expand the role of the title character’s father in , his work-in-progress about an Indian girl who comes to regret moving from her village to the big city. In the completed version of the play, the father tries—in vain — to convince his daughter to come home to her family. “For me,” Ryga said years after the Vancouver Playhouse’s acclaimed premiere production, “the inclusion in the play of the character of Rita Joe’s father was the inclusion of the man Dan George.”
