Golden Globes: Lily Gladstone becomes 1st Indigenous woman to secure award for Best Actress in a Drama

Lily Gladstone achieved a historic milestone as she became the first Indigenous woman to secure the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama, thanks to her performance in Martin Scorsese's ‘Killers of the Flower Moon.’

This marked the inaugural nomination for the 37-year-old actor who portrayed Mollie Kyle, a real-life character whose family and community in 1920s Oklahoma's Osage Nation were the victims of a string of murders.

Gladstone opened her award acceptance speech in the Blackfeet language, an Algonquian language spoken by the Blackfoot or Niitsitapi people in Montana, US.

The actor termed the win as ‘a historic one’ that doesn't belong to only her.

‘I love everyone in this room. I don't have words. I just spoke a bit of Blackfeet language, a beautiful community nation that raised me, that encouraged me to keep going, keep doing this 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,’ she said.

‘This is for every little rez kid, every little urban kid, every little Native kid 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,’ she continued.

Gladstone also thanked Scorsese and her co-star Leonardo DiCaprio. She said, ‘You are all changing things. Thank you for being such allies.’

She further said she is grateful to be able to speak even a little bit of Blackfeet, which she's not fluent in.

‘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... It (the award) doesn't belong to just me. I'm holding it right now. I'm holding it with all my beautiful sisters in the film,’ she said.

Other nominees in the Golden Globe best actress in a motion picture – drama category were: Carey Mulligan for ‘Maestro’, Sandra Huller for ‘Anatomy of a Fall’, Annette Bening for ‘Nyad’, Greta Lee for ‘Past Lives’ and Cailee Spaeny for ‘Priscilla’.

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