‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Star Lily Gladstone Accepts “Historic Win” As First Indigenous Golden Globe Winner for Feature Actress

By Anna Menta
Published Jan. 7, 2024, 11:17 p.m. ET

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Golden Globes 2024

Lily Gladstone made history on Sunday as the first-ever Native American woman to win the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, for her role in Killers of the Flower Moon.

As Gladstone took the stage to accept the award, she was met with a standing ovation from her peers for her win. (This bodes well for her chances at the Oscars, too!) Gladstone opened the speech by speaking the language of the Blackfeet Nation. Gladstone grew up on a Blackfeet reservation in Montana, with a white mother and Blackfeet father.

“I don’t have words,” Gladstone then said, in English. “I just spoke a bit of Blackfeet language, the beautiful nation, beautiful community, that raised me, that 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 classrooms, so I had a Blackfeet language teacher growing up. “

Gladstone’s words were met with cheers. She continued, “I hope I don’t get counted down too fast, because it’s a historic one. I’m so grateful that I can speak even a little bit of my language, which I’m not fluent in, even though I’m up here, because in this business, native actors used to speak their lines in English, and then the sound mixers would run them backward to accomplish native languages on camera.

Gladstone concluded, “This is a historic win. It doesn’t belong to just me. I’m holding it right now, I’m holding it with all of my beautiful sisters in the film, my mother, and [native actress] Tantoo Cardinal. I’m standing on all of your shoulders.”

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Gladstone went on to thank director Martin Scorsese, and her co-stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro. Then she finished it off, by saying, “This is for every little res 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.”

Killers of the Flower Moon is a period drama that tells the true story of the murders in the Osage Nation in the 1920s, with Gladston starring as Osage woman Molly Burkhart. The film was a joint release between Apple TV Studios and Paramount, and will be streaming on Apple TV+ on January 12.