Lily Gladstone Native American Actress Wins Golden Globe for her performance in Killers of the Flower Moon

By Marnie Cook

Native Sun News Today Assistant Editor

Sometimes, it’s hard to see change. It can feel like every step is a slog, two steps forward and three steps back. But every now and then something happens that is proof transformation has occurred and that more is afoot. Sunday night was one of those moments, when history was changed in front of our very eyes, as the first Native American woman won a prestigious Golden Globe Award. Lily Gladstone accepted the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama for her performance in director Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Not an easy task for a Native American woman competing in a field dominated and run by very powerful white men.

Hollywood, since its inception, has portrayed Native Americans as savages and sociopathic murderers who are on the “war path. “ Early films showed Native Americans gleefully terrorizing kindly settlers for absolutely no reason. These were men’s roles and generally were not played by Native American actors.

There were few prominent Native Americans in Hollywood to role model for little Native American kids. Those of a certain generation remember the moment they found out that Jay Silverheels was Native American. Silverheels, who played Tonto on the TV show the Lone Ranger until it ended in 1960, continued acting but was typecast as a Native American. He eventually co-founded the Indian Actors Workshop in the 1960’s and remained a strong advocate for Native Americans in film and TV, according to NPR. Silverheels was able to see the bigger picture rather than just dwell on the indignities he had to endure from the industry. He understood there were things he could change and couldn’t change. The Huffington Post reports an actor who worked with Jay at the Workshop talked about Silverheels dedication to teaching and coaching Indian actors who could get hired for Indian roles and bring truth to those roles.

It wasn’t until the mid-20^th century when the Civil Rights era and the changes in American society prompted the change in the Hollywood western. The Revisionist Western genre was born. It portrayed Native Americans as victims and white people as the aggressors, like the movie Little Big Man directed by Arthur Penn.

Watching the film again, there is no shortage of stereotypes, but what contrasts this western from others that came before is its depiction of Native Americans as humans. Native Americans everywhere identified with Old Lodge Skins played by Chief Dan George. George, who in his real life had been chief of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation of North Vancouver, who only began acting when he was 60, was able to bring his own experiences to the role.

Had Penn not had a greater vision to bring honesty to the audience, had he instead focused on the returns at the box office he might have made a very different movie by casting a well-known non-Native actor in that role. According to the Library of Congress, Marlon Brando and Lawrence Olivier were considered for the role of Old Lodge Skins but fortunately for us all, both turned it down. George was the first Native American to be nominated for both a Golden Globe and Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and won the Best Supporting Actor Award from the New York Film Critics Circle Award, National Society of Film Critics Award and Laurel Awards for his role in Little Big Man.

Acting roles for Native Americans have only recently evolved as Hollywood was forced to address its portrayal and representation of Native Americans in film. With help from some very committed actors and directors, like Kevin Costner and his sweeping TELLIING of the plight of the Plains Indians with Dances With Wolves from 1990. It too can be criticized, but the commitment to truthful portrayal of history in cinema again made history. It was the first time that Native Americans had heard their own language portrayed accurately in film.

Lily Gladstone, in her acceptance speech, spoke in Blackfeet and then in English and said, “Native actors used to speak their lines in English and the sound mixer would run them backward to accomplish Native languages on camera.”

Gladstone is Blackfeet from the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning Montana. She’s representative in many ways to the modern Native American: she’s a “rez” Indian and an urban Indian and she is also of mixed blood as her mother was white and her father Blackfeet and Nez Perce. At 5, she became inspired to play an Ewok part after seeing Return of the Jedi. She went to the University of Montana and has spent many years honing her craft and deserving of the honor. Scorsese’s telling of murders of members of the Osage nation for oil and Gladstone’s win for Best Actress will be remembered as another milestone for Native Americans in Hollywood.

This is a milestone for Native American women, too.

Currently, Native American women are facing an epidemic of violence which has roots in the human hierarchy established by the colonizers. At the very bottom of this social order, are Native American women.

Violence and sexual abuse were virtually unheard of in traditional societies. In Lakota culture, women had an important voice, they held power and were consulted in every aspect of tribal life. They held roles of political importance, they had spiritual knowledge and medical expertise. Women had specific roles in tribal society, as did men, but men and women shared duties, like child-rearing. It wasn’t until European colonization and a strategy of conquest and genocide that permitted rampant sexual abuse and murder of Native women by the colonizers.

Hollywood still has its problems. Cherokee Nation citizen Tim Landes told the Cherokee Phoenix that this was a showpiece for Leonard DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro. Jennifer Cole-Robinson a citizen of the United Keetoowah Band also told the Phoenix that it was a good movie but felt telling the true story of what happened was a secondary thought. It certainly does feel like some things never change.

It has been 30 years already since the release of Dances and 105 years since the actual events detailed in Flower Moon. Whether or not Lily Gladstone wins the Oscar and the other awards leading up to the Oscars, she will be remembered by young Native American women as an example of possibilities Gladstone’s win is proof that change has occurred, albeit very slowly.

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