Golden Globes 2024: Lily Gladstone becomes first indigenous actor to lift trophy

Lily Gladstone made history as she became the first indigenous actor to lift the Golden Globe trophy on Sunday. She bagged the award in the Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama category for her performance in Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon.

Previously, Irene Bedard was the only other indigenous actor to receive a nomination in the Best Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie category, for Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee in 1994. As an indigenous director, Taika Waititi got a nomination for Best Musical/Comedy Film for Jojo Rabbit in 2020, and Best Musical/Comedy Series for Reservation Dogs in 2022. 

“This is a historic one, and it doesn’t belong to just me,” Gladstone said while accepting her award, after which she continued speaking in her native language, Blackfeet. “I’m so grateful that I can speak even a little bit of my language 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," she further said. 

Concluding her speech, she said, "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, with tremendous allies and tremendous trust with each other.”

Gladstone, who goes by she/they pronouns, played a real-life Osage woman Mollie Burkhart in Scorsese's film that shows how the systematic murders of Osage people took place in the 1920s. In the film, she speaks both Osage and English.