Lily Gladstone opens Golden Globe victory speech in Blackfeet language: ‘This is a historic win’

“Killers of the Flower Moon” star Lily Gladstone has won the Golden Globe for best actress in a motion picture - drama, making history as the first Indigenous woman to win the award. The evening marked the first-ever Globes nomination for the rising star.

Gladstone opened her victory speech in the Blackfeet language, before thanking her 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.”

She went on: “I’m so grateful I can speak even 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 the sound mixer would run them backwards to accomplish Native languages on camera.”

Gladstone continued, “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 at the table over here, and my mother, standing on all of your shoulders.”

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She then thanked her director Martin Scorsese and co-star Leonardo DiCaprio. “You are all changing things. Thank you for being such allies.”

Gladstone concluded, “This is for every little rez kid, every little urban kid, every little Native kid out there who has a dream and is seeing themselves represented in our stories told by ourselves, in our own words, with tremendous allies and tremendous trust from within, from each other.”

Gladstone won for her portrayal of real-life figure Mollie Kyle, the Indigenous wife of World War I veteran Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio), in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” The Scorsese epic tells the true story of the Reign of Terror in 1920s Oklahoma, during which members of the Osage Nation were murdered by a criminal ring eager to secure their oil and wealth.

“Awards recognition to me just means that people have seen the film that we were hoping we were making. That people have connected to it,” she said. “‘Cause your character is the conduit for the audience to really be in the story. That’s the best part.”

Gladstone beat out Carey Mulligan (“Maestro”), Sandra Hüller (“Anatomy of a Fall”), Annette Bening (“Nyad”), Greta Lee (“Past Lives”) and Cailee Spaeny (“Priscilla”).

“Killers of the Flower Moon” was one of the leading competitors at this year’s Globes, scoring seven nominations across all categories, including nods in best motion picture - drama, best director for Martin Scorsese, best actor for Leonardo DiCaprio and best supporting actor for Robert De Niro. Gladstone took home the film’s only win.