Lily Gladstone’s front-runner status in the best-actress race was solidified at the Golden Globes 2024, where she dedicated her historic win for Killers of the Flower Moon to “every little res kid, every little urban kid, every little native kid out there that has a dream.”
The actor, who was nominated alongside Anatomy of a Fall’s Sandra Hüller, Nyad’s Annette Bening, Past Lives’ Greta Lee, Maestro’s Carey Mulligan, and Priscilla’s Cailee Spaeny earned Killers’ sole win at the 81st Golden Globes. She began her powerful remarks by speaking in her native Blackfeet language. In English, Gladstone then thanked “the beautiful community nation that raised me, that encouraged me to keep going, keep doing this,” adding, “My mom, who even though she’s not Blackfeet, worked tirelessly to get this language into our classrooms so I had a Blackfeet-language teacher growing up.”
Gladstone acknowledged Hollywood’s history of erasing Native American actors and narratives onscreen, noting that “in this business, Native actors used to speak their lines in English” before a sound mixer would play the tracks backwards in order to approximate Native languages—a technique that produced gibberish passed off as authentic speech. “This is a historic win,” Gladstone continued. “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 there, and my mother, standing on all of your shoulders.”
Accepting the honor for her performance as Mollie Kyle, whose community in the Osage Nation of 1920s Oklahoma was ravaged in a series of serial killings, Gladstone concluded her speech by thanking her cohort, including director Martin Scorsese, and costars Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. “You are all changing things,” she said. “Thank you for being such allies.”
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