[2][3][4] Cardinal has played roles in many notable films and television series, including Spirit Bay, Loyalties, Dances with Wolves, Black Robe, Legends of the Fall, Smoke Signals, Hold the Dark and North of 60.

She was cast in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation mini-series By Way of the Stars with Gordon Tootoosis as the Cree Chief and Eric Schweig as Black Thunder.

[5] In 2012, Cardinal portrayed Regan in an all-aboriginal production of William Shakespeare's King Lear at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, alongside a cast that also included August Schellenberg as Lear, Billy Merasty as Gloucester, Jani Lauzon in a dual role as Cordelia and the Fool, and Craig Lauzon as Kent.

[2] In the 2018 film The Grizzlies, she plays a high school principal who is skeptical that a first-time teacher can address social issues in the northwestern Nunavut community of Kugluktuk.

On November 26, 2021, Cardinal and several other laureates received the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards after a nearly two-year delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic.