Lily Gladstone honored her Blackfeet roots while accepting an award at the Golden Globes.
Gladstone, 37, started her acceptance speech on Sunday, January 7, by speaking in Blackfeet before continuing in English.
“I love everyone in this room right now. I don’t have words. I just spoke a bit in Blackfeet language — a beautiful community and nation that raised me and encouraged me to keep going and doing this,” she explained. “My mom — who even though she’s not Blackfeet — worked tirelessly to get our language into our classrooms.”
Gladstone, who is the first Indigenous winner in her category, continued: “I’m so grateful that I could speak even a little bit of my language, which I’m not fluent enough in because Native actors used to speak their lines in English and then the sound mixers would run them backwards to accomplish Native language on camera.”
The actress went on to thank costars Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro as well as director Martin Scorsese for their support. “This is a historic win that doesn’t belong to just me. Thank you Marty. Thank you Leo. Thank you Bob,” she concluded. “You are all changing things. Thank you for being such allies.”
Gladstone beat Annette Bening (Nyad), Sandra Huller (Anatomy of a Fall), Greta Lee (Past Lives), Carey Mulligan (Maestro) and Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla) for best actress in a drama motion picture.
Killers of the Flower Moon, which tells the true story of a series of murders of Osage indigenous Americans that took place in 1920s Oklahoma, scored a total of seven nods at this year’s award show.
The film’s nominations include Best Motion Picture — Drama, Best Original Score — Motion Picture and Best Screenplay — Motion Picture.
Scorsese, 81, also earned a Best Director nod for his work on the film while DiCaprio, 49 and De Niro, 80, were nominated for their acting. The film only won one award.
“I am deeply moved that the Golden Globes is recognizing our film and the Osage heart behind it. We could never have brought this story to life without the personal contributions of the Osage Nation, and I’ll be forever grateful to them and every member of the cast and crew,” Gladstone said in a statement last month after making history as the Golden Globes’ first indigenous nominee for Female Actor in a Motion Picture.
She added that it is “especially meaningful” to be nominated alongside her collaborators Scorsese, 81, De Niro and DiCaprio.
Although the Killers of the Flower Moon team collaborated with the Osage community on the film — Geoffrey Standing Bear, the Principal Chief of the Osage nation, fully endorsed the project — not everyone approved of how the work portrayed indigenous people.
“This film was painful, grueling, unrelenting and unnecessarily graphic,” Reservation Dogs star Devery Jacobs wrote via X in October 2023. “Being Native, watching this movie was f–king hellfire. Imagine the worst atrocities committed against [your] ancestors, then having to sit thru a movie explicitly filled w/ them, w/ the only respite being 30 min long scenes of murderous white guys talking about/planning the killings.”
Gladstone later acknowledged that the film may be difficult for some people to watch via a November 2023 X thread.
“See it when and only if you feel ready, and see it with people you feel safe with. You’ll likely have a lot of generational grief to process. You’re not alone,” she wrote. “I’m so proud of the film we made with so many Osage Nation leaders, artists, educators & community advocates. Never forget this story is recent history with a lasting impact on breathing, feeling people today. It belongs to them, & we all have so much to learn from it.”
DiCaprio, meanwhile, gushed about working with Gladstone during a joint interview with British Vogue in September 2023.
“Marty just instinctively knew Lily was the one,” the actor said, noting that there was a “truthfulness in [Gladstone’s] eyes” that came through even when Scorcese met her via Zoom. “She carries the entire film and the story.”
