Hollywood has a long history of otherizing or merely omitting Native American and other Indigenous populations, an unfortunate fact that made Killers of the Flower Moon star Lily Gladstone’s win for finest starlet in a movie (drama) classification at the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards on Sunday night even more poignant.
Gladstone, who is of Piegan Blackfeet, Nez Perce, and European heritage and matured on the Montana booking of the Blackfeet Nation, is the Native individual to win a Golden Globe for finest starlet. “This is a historical win. It does not come from simply me,” the star stated, resolving the crowd at the Beverly Hilton in the Blackfeet language for the very first time in the award program’s history before thanking their mom for “work[ing] relentlessly to get our language into our class so I had a Blackfeet language instructor maturing.
“I’m so grateful I can speak even a bit of my language, which I’m not proficient in, up here, due to the fact that, in this company, Native stars utilized to speak their lines in English, and the sound mixer would run them in reverse to achieve native languages on electronic camera,” Gladstone continued. They included, “This is for each little rez kid, every little city kid, every little Native kid out there who has a dream and is seeing themselves represented in our stories informed by ourselves, in our own words, with incredible allies and significant trust from within, from each other.” Ideally, this win is simply the very first in a series of award-show-season acknowledgments for Gladstone, not to discuss the numerous other deserving Indigenous stars presently assisting to change the show business.