Hollywood spent much of its early history turning Native people into scenery, villains, silent chiefs, or anonymous warriors. The actors below pushed against that system in different ways. Some became major mainstream stars; others brought cultural knowledge to productions, built Indigenous-led projects, or made room for Native characters with ordinary contemporary lives.
This is an editorial list, not an objective ranking. “Native American” is used here primarily for U.S. American Indian and Alaska Native performers, alongside Indigenous actors from Canada whose work substantially shaped North American screen culture. Tribal citizenship, community recognition, family history, and cultural ties are not interchangeable—and they should not be replaced by vague ancestry claims.
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1. Luther Standing Bear — Sicangu and Oglala Lakota
Luther Standing Bear was an actor, author, educator, and cultural advocate who worked in early Hollywood. He belonged to a generation of Native performers who entered films at a time when Native people were usually represented by outsiders. His importance goes beyond his screen credits: through writing, public speaking, and performance, he challenged the right of Hollywood to define Lakota history and identity without Native participation.
2. Will Rogers — Cherokee
Born in 1879 near Oologah in Indian Territory, Will Rogers became one of the most commercially successful entertainers in the United States. He moved from cowboy and Wild West performances—where he was billed as the “Cherokee Kid”—into stage, film, radio, and newspaper work. Rogers was not trapped in “Indian roles.” He became a national star and political humorist whose Cherokee identity was part of his public persona without limiting his range.
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3. Nipo Strongheart — Yakama-associated performer
Nipo Strongheart worked as a film actor, Wild West performer, cultural lecturer, and technical adviser. He advised productions involving Native subjects and tried to influence the customs and representation shown onscreen. His biography requires care: available sources describe him as an honorary Yakama member rather than an enrolled Yakama citizen. That qualification does not erase his place in the early effort to give Native cultural knowledge a role in filmmaking.
4. Chief Yowlachie — Puyallup heritage
Born Daniel Simmons, Chief Yowlachie appeared extensively in silent films and classical Hollywood westerns. Sources identify Puyallup heritage through both parents, while also noting that he was not enrolled in the Yakama Nation. His career captures the contradiction of the studio era: he found steady work, but Hollywood often reduced him to a chief, warrior, or comic Native side character.
5. Jay Silverheels — Mohawk
Jay Silverheels, born Harold J. Smith on the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario, became internationally famous as Tonto in The Lone Ranger. A Mohawk actor and athlete, he first entered Hollywood through stunt work and extra roles. He was reportedly the first Native American honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Tonto brought Silverheels extraordinary visibility, but the role was also one of television’s most influential Native stereotypes. His later advocacy for better representation reflects that tension: he achieved a major breakthrough while being identified with a character Hollywood had not allowed to become fully self-defining.
6. Chief Dan George — Tsleil-Waututh
Chief Dan George began acting professionally at roughly 60, after working as a longshoreman, construction worker, school-bus driver, musician, and Tsleil-Waututh chief. His performance as Old Lodge Skins in Little Big Man earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 1971—the first Academy Award acting nomination for an Indigenous actor.
George brought warmth, irony, sorrow, and authority to roles that could easily have been written as caricatures. His career helped move Native screen characters beyond the silent, savage, or purely comic stereotypes of earlier westerns.
7. Will Sampson — Muscogee
Will Sampson was a Muscogee actor, painter, and rodeo performer from Oklahoma. Audiences knew him as Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), and he later appeared in The Outlaw Josey Wales and Poltergeist II: The Other Side.
Sampson showed that a Native actor could play a major supporting role in a story that was not fundamentally a western or a history lesson. His work made Native presence part of mainstream drama rather than a signal that a film had entered “Indian country.”
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8. Russell Means — Oglala Lakota
Russell Means was an Oglala Lakota activist and actor whose film career began with The Last of the Mohicans (1992). He also appeared in Natural Born Killers, Pocahontas, television productions, and other films. Means brought the political credibility of a prominent American Indian Movement leader into entertainment.
His acting cannot be separated from his public insistence that Native people should have agency over the depiction of Native history. He was not simply available to authenticate a production; he entered mainstream film with a clearly articulated Native political voice.
9. Floyd “Red Crow” Westerman — Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota
Floyd “Red Crow” Westerman was a Dakota actor, musician, songwriter, and activist. His screen work included Dances with Wolves, The X-Files, Northern Exposure, and many other film and television productions.
Rank #2
Westerman helped establish the Native elder as a complex and politically conscious presence. His characters could carry memory, anger, humor, and judgment instead of functioning as one-dimensional spiritual guides. His music and activism extended that influence beyond acting.
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10. Wes Studi — Cherokee Nation
Wes Studi built one of the most formidable careers by a Native actor, appearing in Dances with Wolves, The Last of the Mohicans, Geronimo: An American Legend, Heat, Avatar, and Hostiles. In 2019, the Academy awarded him an Honorary Oscar for his career and support of the Native American community.
Studi’s significance is not simply that he played Native characters. He gave them intelligence, menace, authority, strategic skill, and emotional depth. The Honorary Oscar was also a long-delayed recognition of how much Native performers had contributed to American cinema.
11. Graham Greene — Oneida
Graham Greene, a Canadian First Nations actor from the Oneida community, received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for Dances with Wolves (1990). His extensive work includes Thunderheart, The Green Mile, Maverick, Wind River, and numerous television productions.
Greene normalized the idea that a Native actor could move between drama, comedy, crime, fantasy, and studio entertainment. He was not restricted to playing historical figures or characters whose only purpose was to explain Native culture to non-Native audiences.
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Greene died on September 1, 2025, at age 73.
12. Gary Farmer — Cayuga Nation
Gary Farmer is a Cayuga actor and musician known for Powwow Highway, Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man, and Smoke Signals. The National Film Board of Canada identifies him as a Cayuga Nation member with more than 90 film and television appearances.
Farmer became a defining performer in the independent Native cinema movement of the 1980s and 1990s. His work proved that Native stories could be contemporary, funny, surreal, political, and formally unconventional—not only tragic historical dramas or westerns.
13. Tantoo Cardinal — Cree and Métis
Tantoo Cardinal is a Métis actor raised by her Cree grandmother. Her credits include Loyalties, Dances with Wolves, Black Robe, Legends of the Fall, Smoke Signals, Wind River, and Killers of the Flower Moon. Canada’s Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards describe her as having worked in more than 120 film, television, and theatre roles.
Cardinal helped transform the kinds of Indigenous women Hollywood could imagine. Her characters have been mothers, professionals, activists, survivors, elders, and dramatic leads—not merely background figures in stories centered on men.
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Irene Bedard is an Alaska Native actor enrolled in the Native Village of Koyuk. She played Mary Crow Dog in Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee, Suzy Song in Smoke Signals, and voiced the title character in Disney’s animated Pocahontas.
That combination of live-action drama and major animation made Bedard one of the most recognizable Native women in American popular culture. Her work also brought contemporary Native identity into a format seen by millions of children and families worldwide.
Rank #3
15. Adam Beach — Saulteaux
Adam Beach is a Saulteaux actor from Manitoba who became widely known through Smoke Signals, Windtalkers, Flags of Our Fathers, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and Suicide Squad. He also founded the Adam Beach Film Institute to train Indigenous youth in filmmaking.
Beach became one of the most visible Indigenous actors in commercial North American cinema, but his impact is not limited to acting. By supporting filmmaking education, he helped address the deeper problem behind underrepresentation: the shortage of Indigenous people controlling production as well as appearing onscreen.
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Gil Birmingham’s credits include Billy Black in The Twilight Saga, Thomas Rainwater in Yellowstone, and roles in Hell or High Water, Wind River, and Under the Banner of Heaven.
Television has been especially important to Birmingham’s career. His characters have been political leaders, professionals, fathers, and romantic figures. “Native” is part of their identity, but it is not the only thing they are allowed to be.
17. Michael Greyeyes — Plains Cree
Michael Greyeyes is a Plains Cree actor, dancer, choreographer, director, and educator from Muskeg Lake Cree Nation. His screen work includes Woman Walks Ahead, Fear the Walking Dead, True Detective, Rutherford Falls, Reservation Dogs, and 1923.
Greyeyes has broadened the public image of the Native performer through work across film, television, theatre, dance, directing, and education. His career demonstrates that Indigenous screen culture is not a single genre or performance tradition.
18. Zahn McClarnon — Hunkpapa Lakota
Zahn McClarnon is a Hunkpapa Lakota actor known for Fargo, Westworld, Reservation Dogs, and AMC’s Dark Winds, in which he plays Navajo police officer Joe Leaphorn.
McClarnon also illustrates a crucial change in production power. During Dark Winds, he challenged a planned plot point in which Leaphorn would murder a white antagonist, arguing that the action conflicted with the character’s cultural and moral logic. The showrunner rewrote the finale. A Native actor was not merely performing a script; he was helping determine whether the script understood its Native lead.
19. Kiowa Gordon — Hualapai
Kiowa Gordon, a member of the Hualapai Tribe of northern Arizona, became widely known as Embry Call in The Twilight Saga. He later played Jim Chee in Dark Winds.
Gordon’s career connects blockbuster franchise exposure with Indigenous-led television storytelling. The contrast matters: in one setting, a Native actor was part of a global fantasy phenomenon; in the other, he helped populate a series centered on Indigenous characters, communities, and culture.
20. Amber Midthunder — Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux
Amber Midthunder is associated with the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Reservation. Her credits include Legion, Roswell, New Mexico, Prey, and Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Her lead performance in Prey placed a Native woman at the center of a major action franchise. The film did not organize its story around a white protagonist who discovers Native bravery; Midthunder carried the action, emotion, and commercial appeal herself. She became a strong example of the shift from “Native role” to “Native star.”
Rank #4
21. Misty Upham — Blackfeet Nation
Misty Upham was a Blackfeet actor whose work included Frozen River, Jimmy P., August: Osage County, Django Unchained, and Big Love. The Television Academy identifies her as a member of the Blackfoot Tribe.
Upham brought unusual emotional specificity to working-class, contemporary, and psychologically complex Native women. Her career was tragically brief, but her performances remain influential among Indigenous actors and filmmakers because they refused the idea that Native women could only serve as symbols or supporting figures.
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Lily Gladstone has Blackfeet and Nez Perce ancestry and was raised in connection with the Blackfeet Nation. Her performance as Mollie Burkhart in Killers of the Flower Moon made her the first Native American nominee for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She also became the first Indigenous performer to win the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture—Drama for that performance.
Gladstone’s breakthrough shifted Native representation into the center of awards-season conversation. It also brought Blackfeet language and Indigenous fashion into globally watched Hollywood ceremonies. Her nomination was a specific milestone—Best Actress—not a claim that no Indigenous performer had ever been nominated in any Academy category.
23. Devery Jacobs — Kanien’kehá:ka/Mohawk
Born and raised in Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory, Devery Jacobs has worked in Rhymes for Young Ghouls, Mohawk Girls, American Gods, Reservation Dogs, and Echo. She has also written, directed, produced, and participated in Indigenous rights activism.
Jacobs represents the modern Indigenous performer as a multi-hyphenate creator rather than an actor waiting for permission from the industry. Her work has helped bring contemporary and queer Native experiences into mainstream television while expanding who gets to shape those stories.
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Forrest Goodluck made his feature-film debut as Hugh Glass’s son Hawk in The Revenant. His later work includes The Miseducation of Cameron Post, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, and Lawmen: Bass Reeves. Sources identify his family background as including Navajo, Hidatsa, Mandan, and Tsimshian ancestry.
Goodluck belongs to a younger generation whose roles move across queer, environmental, historical, and political stories. His career is not confined to westerns or films explicitly marketed as Native narratives.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.25. Dallas Goldtooth — Mdewakanton Dakota and Diné
Dallas Goldtooth is an enrolled member of the Lower Sioux Indian Community and has Diné heritage. He is an actor, writer, comedian, environmental activist, and co-founder of the Indigenous comedy group the 1491s. His screen credits include Reservation Dogs, Echo, Fallout, and The Last Frontier.
Goldtooth helped move Native comedy away from occasional stereotype-based appearances and toward a creator-driven Indigenous voice. His work also links performance with language teaching, environmental activism, and political organizing—proof that representation can be funny, pointed, and community-minded at the same time.
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| Milestone | What it actually means |
|---|---|
| Chief Dan George | First Indigenous actor nominated for an Academy Award, for Little Big Man. |
| Wes Studi | First Native American actor to receive an Academy Award, an Honorary Oscar in 2019. This was not a competitive acting win. |
| Lily Gladstone | First Native American nominee for Best Actress at the Academy Awards, and first Indigenous performer to win the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture—Drama. |
| Graham Greene | Not the first Native actor nominated for an Oscar. Chief Dan George received that earlier acting nomination. |
Who does not belong on a verified list?
Accuracy matters particularly in a subject shaped by decades of performers being cast as generic “Indians.” Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Oscar, for example, was for Best Original Song as co-writer of “Up Where We Belong,” not for acting. Iron Eyes Cody should not be counted as a verified Native American actor: archival and journalistic accounts identify him as Italian American and dispute his claimed Native identity.
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Nipo Strongheart and Chief Yowlachie also require qualifications. Sources describe their Native heritage and cultural associations, but neither should casually be labeled an enrolled member of the tribe most often attached to his screen biography.
Finally, “Native American” and “Indigenous” are not interchangeable in every context. Canadian actors such as Graham Greene, Adam Beach, Tantoo Cardinal, Gary Farmer, Michael Greyeyes, and Devery Jacobs are more precisely described through their documented First Nations, Métis, or Inuit identities.
What changed?
The most important change is not a single casting milestone. It is the gradual expansion of control. Early performers such as Standing Bear and Strongheart tried to correct productions from inside a hostile system. Silverheels achieved fame while trapped in a stereotype. Later actors including Studi, Greene, Cardinal, Farmer, and Beach proved that Indigenous performers could sustain varied mainstream and independent careers.
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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallThe current generation is pushing further. Midthunder leads global action cinema; Gladstone anchors prestige drama; Jacobs works as an actor and creator; McClarnon influences the moral direction of a major series; and Goldtooth brings Indigenous comedy and activism into popular television. Hollywood has not solved its representation problem, but these performers have made it harder to pretend that Native people belong only in the past—or only in somebody else’s version of it.
FAQ
Who was the first Native American actor nominated for an Oscar?
Chief Dan George was the first Indigenous actor nominated for an Academy Award, receiving a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Little Big Man in 1971.
Who was the first Native American actor to receive an Academy Award?
Wes Studi became the first Native American actor to receive an Academy Award when he was given an Honorary Oscar in 2019. It was an honorary award, not a competitive acting victory.
Was Lily Gladstone the first Native actor nominated for an Academy Award?
She was the first Native American nominee for Best Actress. She was not the first Indigenous acting nominee overall; Chief Dan George received that distinction earlier.
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Why is Graham Greene important to Hollywood?
Greene helped normalize Native actors as versatile performers who could work across drama, comedy, crime, fantasy, television, and mainstream studio films. He received an Academy Award nomination for Dances with Wolves.
Are all 25 actors from the United States?
No. The list includes U.S. American Indian and Alaska Native actors, as well as Indigenous actors from Canada whose careers materially shaped North American screen culture.
Why are some tribal identities described with qualifications?
Tribal citizenship, community recognition, family history, and honorary membership are different things. The qualifications prevent uncertain or disputed claims from being presented as verified enrollment.
The Bottom Line
These 25 performers changed Hollywood by expanding more than the number of Native faces onscreen. They challenged stereotypes, carried major productions, created Indigenous work, corrected scripts, trained younger filmmakers, and made Native characters visible in genres ranging from westerns and prestige dramas to animation, horror, comedy, and science fiction. Their combined legacy is a demand for representation with authority behind it—not merely Native people appearing in stories, but Native artists helping decide what those stories mean.
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