Lily Gladstone is first Indigenous woman to win best actress in a drama at Golden Globes

Lily Gladstone became the first Indigenous woman in Golden Globes history to win the award for best actress in a drama on Sunday evening — and then delivered part of her acceptance speech in the Blackfeet language.

“I’m so grateful that I can speak even a little bit of my language, which I’m not fluent enough [in] here, because in this business, Native actors used to speak their lines in English and then the sound mixers would run them backwards to accomplish Native languages on camera,” said Gladstone. “This is an historic [award]. It doesn’t belong to just me.”

The actor played Molly Kyle in Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese’s historical drama about the Osage murders, a period in the early 20th century where members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation in Oklahoma were murdered by white interlopers.

Kyle was a real-life Osage woman deceived by her husband, Ernest Burkhart (played in the film by Leonardo DiCaprio), who helped hatch a conspiracy to murder her family and steal their headrights and money.

Gladstone, whose father is Blackfeet and Nimiipuu, split her childhood between Seattle and the Blackfeet reservation in Montana.

She added that her mom, who is not Blackfeet, “worked tirelessly to get our language into our classroom, so I had a Blackfeet language teacher growing up.”

Reacting to Gladstone’s win, actress-producer Jennifer Podemski told CBC News: “I just felt like I was in the bleachers, screaming and hoping that this would go in her favour because it represents all of us.”

Podemski, who is Anishinaabe, Leni Lenape and Métis on her mother’s side, said she watched the Globes just for Gladstone because she rarely sees Indigenous representatives on awards show stages.

Gladstone’s choice to speak in the Blackfeet language was a significant moment for Indigenous audiences and one that will broaden non-Indigenous people’s understanding of their cultures, she added.

“It’s one step towards reclamation of languages [and] of space, but also it’s one step towards amplifying the beauty and diversity of Indigenous people,” Podemski said.

‘This is for every little rez kid’

Gladstone said she shared the award with the actresses who played her sisters in the film (Cara Jade Myers, Janae Collins and Jillian Dion) and gave a shout-out to her Alberta-born co-star, veteran Indigenous actress Tantoo Cardinal, who plays their mother.

She also thanked Scorsese, DiCaprio and co-star Robert de Niro “for being such allies,” as well as Osage Nation and its Principal Chief Standing Bear, who was a consultant on Killers of The Flower Moon. The movie is based on David Grann’s 2017 book of the same name.

“This is for every little rez kid, every little urban kid, every little Native kid who has a dream, 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,” Gladstone concluded. “Thank you all so much.”

Lily Gladstone explains why she spoke Blackfeet language in Golden Globes acceptance speech

Lily Gladstone, who became the first Indigenous woman to win a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture — Drama, explains why she began her acceptance speech in Blackfeet language and what it meant to pursue an acting career with her parents’ support.

Backstage in the press room after her win, Gladstone said that she often introduces herself to new people in her Blackfeet language.

“It was one of the most natural things I could do in the moment,” she explained.

Gladstone, whose breakout role was in the 2016 film Certain Women, is the second Indigenous actress to be nominated by the Globes after Irene Bedard’s nod in 1995 for the TV movie Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee.