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On Sunday night, Lily Gladstone made history, becoming the first Native person to win best actress at the Golden Globes. The Killers of the Flower Moon star, who uses she/they pronouns, earned two standing ovations from the audience in the ballroom—first, upon receiving the award, and then once more after finishing her powerful speech.
Gladstone opened her speech in Blackfeet language to honor “a beautiful community, nation, that raised me and encouraged me to keep going—to keep doing this.” She also acknowledged her mother in the audience, revealing that although she is not Blackfeet, she “worked tirelessly to get our language into our classroom, so I had a Blackfeet language teacher growing up.”
As the New York Times notes, Gladstone is one of only two Native performers to receive an honor at the Golden Globes. The first was Irene Bedard, who received a nomination in 1995 for the TV movie Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee. During their speech, Gladstone noted that the erasure Indigenous people have faced in Hollywood goes far beyond awards shows.
“I hope I don’t get counted down too fast, because this is an historic one,” Gladstone said. “I’m so grateful that I can speak even a little bit of my language, which I’m not fluent in, up here. Because in this business, Native actors used to speak their lines in English, and the sound mixer is run them backwards to accomplish native languages on camera.”
Although Gladstone was the one accepting the award, she emphasized, “It doesn’t belong to just me. I’m holding it right now. I’m holding with all of my beautiful sisters in the film at this table here, and my mother, standing on all of your shoulders. Thank you.”
Gladstone thanked director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Eric Roth, as well as their co-stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro. “You are all changing things,” they said. “Thank you for being such allies.” Gladstone also thanked Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear, who worked as a consultant on the film, as well as the Osage Nation.
“This is for every little rez kid, every little urban kid, every little Native kid out there who has a dream,” Gladstone concluded, “who is seeing themselves represented and our stories told by ourselves, in our own words, with tremendous allies and tremendous trust with and from each other. Thank you all so much.”
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