Dawn Little Sky, an actress who appeared onscreen in Gypsy, The Apple Dumpling Gang and Rawhide and worked as an artist at Walt Disney Studios, has died. She was 95.
Little Sky died Oct. 24 at the Monument Health Hospital in Rapid City, South Dakota, her family announced.
Her husband was late actor Eddie Little Sky, who was one of the first Native men to play Native roles on film and television. His credits included the 1970 films A Man Called Horse and Little Big Man and several episodes of Gilligan’s Island, where he spoke the Siouan language Lakota.
Meanwhile, the couple acted together on episodes of The Magical World of Disney, Gunsmoke, Have Gun — Will Travel and Daniel Boone, and in such features as Chief Crazy Horse (1955), Cimarron (1960), Duel at Diablo (1966) and Journey Through Rosebud (1972).
Born on April 17, 1930, in Fort Yates, North Dakota, Dawn lived on the Standing Rock Reservation (which straddles South and North Dakota) as a youngster, then attended Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas.
While in college, she met Eddie — he called her the “Ava Gardner of Fort Yates” — and they would marry in Roswell, New Mexico, while on the rodeo trail. They ended up in California, where she worked as an actress at Frontierland in Disneyland and as an artist for Walt Disney Studios, where she colored cels for animation projects.
Her acting résumé also included the films Ten Who Dared (1960) and Billy Two Hats (1974), and her career once took her as far away as Israel, she said in a 2022 interview.
In the late 1970s, she and her husband moved to South Dakota, where she served as the director of a cultural center in Eagle Butte and taught art and culture. Eddie died in 1997 at age 71.
She received South Dakota’s Indian Living Treasure Award in 2005.
Survivors include her children, Tojan, Prairie Rose and John, and her grandchildren, Ryanne, Darryan, Britni, Makana, Abigail, Chaske, Edsel, Aleta, Kathryn, Fawn, Trae, Lakota, Duel, Winona, Sparrow, Chanda, Robert, Aspen, January, Nadine, Ardie and Ian.
“Dawn lived an extraordinary life and left a positive impact on all who had the honor to interact with her,” her family said. “Her life was full of so many adventures and unforgettable experiences, and she was the best storyteller with the most amazing sense of humor!”
