‘This Is For Every Native Kid Who Has A Dream’

IMAGE: Lily Gladstone. Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

Lily Gladstone picked up the Best Female Actor- Motion Picture award at the Golden Globes for her performance in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of The Flower Moon.

In her touching acceptance speech, Lily said, ‘I love everyone in this room right now! Thank you. I don’t have words. I just spoke a bit of Blackfeet language, a beautiful community, nation that raised me. They encouraged me to keep going, keep doing this. I’m here with my mom, who even though she’s not Blackfeet, worked tirelessly to get our language into our classroom, so I had a Blackfeet language teacher growing up.’

 

Gladstone spoke about the history-making nature of the victory in her speech: ‘This award belongs to — and I hope I don’t get counted down too fast because this is an historic one — I’m so grateful that I can speak 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 then the sounds mixers run them backwards to accomplish Native languages on camera.

‘This is an historic one. It doesn’t belong to just me. I’m holding it right now. I’m holding it with all of my beautiful sisters, and the film at this table over here, my mother, standing on all of your shoulders. Thank you.’

IMAGE: Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio at the Globes. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

‘Thank you, Marty. Thank you, Leo. Thank you, Bob. You are all changing things. Thank you for being such allies. Thank you Chief Standing Bear.

‘I’m at a loss for what else to say. Thank you to Apple. Thank you my manager and my agent, Jill and Sasha. Thank you to all of you.

‘And this is for every rez kid, every little urban kid, every little Native kid out there 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 from with and from each other. So thank you all so much!’