Lily Gladstone marks history at Golden Globes, dedicates win to local community

Lily Gladstone, who portrayed Mollie Burkhart in the film, Killers of the Flower Moon, made history at the Golden Globe Awards 2024, with an impressive feat.

As reported by PEOPLE, Lily Gladstone won the award for best actress in a motion picture – drama at the ceremony on January 7, 2024.

She won the race against nominees: Carey Mulligan from Maestro, Sandra Hüller from Anatomy of a Fall, Annette Bening from Nyad, Greta Lee from Past Lives and Cailee Spaeny from Priscilla.

Gladstone left behind an imprint on the stage of the Golden Globes for ages to come as she began her acceptance speech in the Blackfeet language, an Algonquian language spoken by the Niitsitapi or Blackfoot people.

Returning back to English she joyfully raved about her community, "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."

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"I love everyone in this room. I don't have words," she exclaimed as tears welled up her eyes.

The 37-year-old actress further continued, "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."

"This [win] is a historic one. It doesn't belong to just me. I'm holding it right now. I'm holding it with all my beautiful sisters in the film at this table over here and my mother, Tantoo Cardinal, standing on all of your shoulders. Thank you," she stated, explaining the significance of her achievement.

The Fancy Dance star expressed her gratitude for director and co-writer Martin Scorsese, as well as costars Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, for "changing things" in this industry. "Thank you for being such allies. Thank you," she said.

Towards the closing seconds, she ended her speech on a motivational note saying, "for every little res kid, every little urban kid, every little Native kid out there who has a dream, who 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."

"So thank you all so much," she concluded as she stepped off the stage taking the award home.