North Vancouver, B.C.: Chief Dan George, the Tsleil-Waututh actor, author and activist who became the first Indigenous performer nominated for a competitive Academy Award, died Sept. 23, 1981, at Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver at age 82, according to The Canadian Encyclopedia and a same-day wire report from United Press International.
Born Geswanouth Slahoot on the Burrard Reserve, now the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, in North Vancouver, George served as an elected chief of his community for 12 years before an acting career that did not begin in earnest until he was in his 60s, according to The Canadian Encyclopedia. His breakthrough came in the 1970 western Little Big Man, in which he played Old Lodge Skins opposite Dustin Hoffman. The role earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor at the 1971 Oscars, making him the first Indigenous actor nominated for a competitive Academy Award, The Canadian Encyclopedia says. He also won a New York Film Critics Circle Award and a National Society of Film Critics Award for the performance.
Even more consequential than his acting, according to historians who have studied his legacy, was a speech he delivered years earlier. On July 1, 1967, as Canada marked its centennial with a ceremony at Vancouver’s Empire Stadium, George stood before the crowd and delivered A Lament for Confederation, a speech that mourned the loss of Indigenous land, freedom and dignity under a century of Canadian colonization while still holding out hope for reconciliation. The address is widely credited with helping galvanize Indigenous political activism in Canada, and it is still taught and quoted decades later.
George’s screen career continued through the 1970s in films including Harry and Tonto in 1974 and The Outlaw Josey Wales in 1976, along with numerous television roles. He also published two books of reflections and poetry, My Heart Soars in 1974 and My Spirit Soars, released after his death in 1982. In 1971, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest civilian honours, in recognition of his acting career and his contributions to public understanding of Indigenous culture, per The Canadian Encyclopedia.
The UPI dispatch, filed the day he died, described George as a member of the Burrard tribe, reflecting the name used for his community at the time. The band formally readopted the name Tsleil-Waututh Nation, meaning people of the inlet, in 1999. The wire report said he had kept acting into his final years despite declining health, and gave his age at death as 82, matching later encyclopedic sources.
George’s legacy has continued to be marked in the decades since. Canada Post issued a postage stamp honouring him in 2008 as part of a series recognizing notable Canadians, and his 1967 centennial address remains one of the most frequently cited texts in discussions of Indigenous rights in Canada. It is not clear from available sources whether George wrote the speech entirely himself or with a collaborator, as some later accounts differ on that point, though its delivery and impact that day are not in dispute.
