Added by you! Chief Dan George

Chief Dan George was a film and theatre actor whose portrayals of sympathetic Aboriginal characters helped to overturn negative stereotypes that once dominated in Hollywood movies. Chief of the Squamish Band of Burrard Inlet, B.C., he had worked as a longshoreman and in construction. As a child, he had been sent to residential school and forbidden from speaking his own language. Chief Dan George achieved success as an actor only after age sixty, when he was cast in Canadian television and stage productions and major American films.  He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in Ryan’s Daughter and won the New York Film Critics Award for his part in Little Big Man. Chief Dan George read Lament for Confederation—a reflection on the past and potential future of First Nations people in Canada—as part of centennial event in Vancouver in 1967.