[citation needed] In 1994, Bedard appeared in her first role as Mary Crow Dog in the television production of Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee, which depicted the 1970s standoff between the US government and citizens of several Native nations, including many of the Pine Ridge Reservation, at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

[8] In 2001, Irene Bedard hosted the Ninth Annual First Americans in the Arts (FAITA) Awards from the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

[9] In 2002, at the Tenth Annual FAITA Awards, Bedard won Outstanding Guest Performance by an Actress in a TV Drama Series for The Agency.

Bedard made an appearance in the music video for Jay-Z's 2017 song "Family Feud", in which she plays a future Madam President of the United States.

[18][19] In 2022, she was cast as Yagoda in the Netflix series Avatar: The Last Airbender and as Sylvie Nanmac in Alaska Daily, the mother of a missing indigenous woman.

[21] Between her films, the pair toured for several years with other musicians in a band called "ID," which came from the initials of their first names, Irene and Denny.