Irene Bedard (born July 22, 1967) is an American actress, who has played mostly lead Native American roles in a variety of films. She is perhaps best known for the role of Suzy Song in the 1998 film Smoke Signals, an adaptation of a Sherman Alexie collection of short stories, as well as for providing the speaking voice for the titular character in the 1995 animated film Pocahontas. Bedard reprised her role as Pocahontas in the films direct-to-video follow-up, Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World (1998) and for a cameo in Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018). Early life Bedard was born in Anchorage, Alaska and is of Iñupiat and French Canadian/Cree (Métis) heritage and an enrolled member of the Native Village of Koyuk in Alaska. Bedard graduated from Dimond High School in Anchorage, Alaska in 1985. Bedard attended The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where she studied musical theater. Career 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. For this role, she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Miniseries or Television Film. She is probably best known as the voice of the eponymous heroine in the 1995 Disney animated film Pocahontas, the direct-to-video 1998 sequel Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World and in the 2018 film Ralph Breaks the Internet. She appeared in a different take of the story in Terence Malick's 2005 film The New World, as Pocahontas's mother, Nonoma Winanuske Matatiske. In 1995, Bedard was chosen as one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People". In 2001, Irene Bedard hosted the Ninth Annual First Americans in the Arts (FAITA) Awards from the Beverly Hilton Hotel. In 2002, at the Tenth Annual FAITA Awards, Bedard won Outstanding Guest Performance by an Actress in a TV Drama Series for The Agency. In 2005, she was cast in the television mini-series Into the West as Margaret "Light Shines" Wheeler. Bedard has been very active in environmental groups to protect sacred lands. In 1997, she co-hosted with Floyd Westerman a benefit for the Dine' People of Big Mountain at The Loft Theatre, in Pasadena. In 2015, she appeared in Chloé