During Golden Globes 2024, Killers of the Flower Moon star Lily Gladstone spoke in the language of her people, the Blackfeet tribe. The captions on streaming services read “a global language,” but it was a specific one — and an American one — her words of appreciation ones that she learned thanks to her mother's insistence that she have access to learning the Native language. That language deserves to be credited appropriately.
Gladstone won the award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama at the Golden Globes, and began her speech with a few words of thanks in the Blackfeet language. “I love everyone in this room right now, thank you,” she continued. “I don't have words. I just spoke a bit of Blackfeet language, the beautiful community nation that raised me and encouraged me to keep going. My mom, even though she's not Blackfeet, worked tirelessly to get Blackeet language into our classroom so I had a Blackfeet language teacher growing up.”
She is the first Indigenous actress to win a Golden Globe for best actress, and only the second to be recognized from the Globes as a whole, the NYT reports.
The 37-year-old actress grew up partially on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. During the press run for Killers of the Flower Moon, she highlighted the importance of the Osage story the movie tells. "I carry my family’s legacy. And I’m expected to carry my family legacy, in a way,” Gladstone told the Associated Press. “Even though I’m not Osage, it did very much feel like it was in my blood.”
Her Golden Globes 2024 look also paid homage to her people with earrings from Blackfeet designer Lenise Omeaso of Antelope Women Designs.
Gladstone continued in her Golden Globes 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 even a little bit of my language which I'm not fluent [in] when I'm 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. This is an historic one and it doesn't belong to just me, I'm holding it right now with my beautiful sisters in the film, at this table over here, my mom. I'm standing on all of your shoulders.”
Watch Lily Gladstone's full speech below:
