Lily Gladstone won the best actress in a drama award for her role as Mollie Burkhart in Martin Scorsese’s epic “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
She opened her acceptance speech in the Blackfeet language.
“A beautiful community, nation, that encouraged me to keep going, keep doing this,” Gladstone said.
“I’m so grateful that 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 then the sound mixers would run them backwards to accomplish Native languages on camera,” she said.
Gladstone is the first Indigenous winner of this award. She was named one of 2023’s AP Breakthrough Entertainers.
“It is, of course, something I have to think about, insofar as I would just really love to speak some of my language — and teach myself a little bit more of my language — to have and to hold in that moment,” Gladstone told AP Film Writer Jake Coyle about the possibility of winning an Oscar. “It would be an incredible moment in my life, but it would mean so much more than just me.