Lily Gladstone found a bonus benefit to winning the lead actress SAG Award: backstage bicep curls. pic.twitter.com/UiH7rwm4MG
— AP Entertainment (@APEntertainment) February 25, 2024
Read this story for the subject (linguistics fascinate me!) and the writing (@karinbrulliard = brilliant) Lily Gladstone made history. The Blackfeet Nation found a champion. https://t.co/TVL81zyKj0
— Molly Hennessy-Fiske (@mollyhf) January 27, 2024
Representation matters. From the Washington Post, “Lily Gladstone made history. The Blackfeet Nation found a champion”:
BROWNING, Mont. — Rence Champ stayed up late to watch the glittery Hollywood ceremony, a world away from the frigid, rural landscape where the tousle-haired third-grader lives. He was rewarded with something astonishing: a woman in sparkling jewels and a strapless gown, clutching a trophy and speaking a language he’d never heard on television — a language he studies at school, a language he understands.
The boy proudly translated for his mother the words that Lily Gladstone spoke after becoming the first Indigenous person to win a Golden Globe for best actress, announcing to all that she hailed from the Blackfeet Nation here, where sprawling prairies meet jagged mountains known commonly as the crown of the continent and to the tribe as the backbone of the earth…
Nowhere is the Gladstone effect felt more deeply than in Browning Public Schools, which in recent years has pushed to revitalize the endangered Blackfoot language using a novel writing system. Words from her acceptance speech — “this is for every little rez kid” — are written on a whiteboard in a high school classroom. First-graders at Bullshoe Elementary made a TikTok video thanking her for her bravery. Photos of Gladstone adorn a bulletin board in the office of Blackfeet Native American studies director Robert Hall, who grew up in Browning and has been hailed locally since the actress told reporters he was a “good friend” who had taught her Blackfoot words.
“Lily Gladstone speaking Blackfoot up on that stage is a victory. It’s saying: I’m still alive,” said Hall, now busy fielding inquiries about the language from newly interested students and teachers. “This isn’t just a symbolic action. This is something that is tangible and has created change.”
Blackfoot could use a prominent champion like Gladstone, who seems to be everyone’s friend, cousin or friend’s cousin here. Like many Native American languages in the United States and Canada, it fell victim to government violence and forced assimilation at boarding schools where Indigenous children were penalized for speaking their native tongues.
Data is scarce, but Hall estimates that just a few dozen people speak fluent Blackfoot on the reservation in Montana; most are elderly. Several hundred people fluent in the language reside in Canada, he said, where three other tribal nations form the rest of what is known as the Blackfoot Confederacy…
For some Blackfeet, hearing the language “is like hearing a lullaby” and depicting it using English letters “is almost a disservice,” Hall said. He runs a language revitalization nonprofit with a cousin and a Canadian Blackfeet man, William Big Bull, who developed the writing system that Browning students are using.
Today, the district has a fat binder of lesson plans and a vocabulary assessment. In the office Hall shares with the Native American studies instructional coach, bins hold lesson props for teachers. One on “iinnii,” the buffalo long revered and relied on by Blackfeet, holds a box made of thick bison hide, a Ziploc bag of dried dung, and a beard, tail and teeth. A Blackfeet history class is a high school graduation requirement.
The effort, which is mostly grant funded, is a bright spot on a reservation where roughly a third of some 10,000 residents live in poverty, opioid addiction is dire, and schools are struggling to pull themselves out of the lowest-performing tier in Montana. About 190 students participate in a K-8 Blackfoot immersion program — learning history, culture and design as well as language — and all students in every grade are exposed to the language through special classes…
GIFT ARTICLE:
Lily Gladstone’s moment is here. It’s a lot to carry. https://t.co/3T1MA7kNp4— Area Woman 💙 ☮️ (@sincereBS) February 22, 2024
… At 37, Gladstone has made history, the first Native American to score a best actress Oscar nomination and the first to win a Golden Globe actress award, which she accepted speaking partially in Blackfoot. Gladstone’s father is of Blackfeet and Nez Percé heritage; her mother is White. “As an Indigenous woman, Lily has broken through a wall that has never been broken in this country, certainly not in Hollywood,” said Julie O’Keefe, an Osage who worked as a “Killers” wardrobe consultant. It was O’Keefe’s first movie job, only to pick up a Netflix series. Gladstone is helping to lift all boats.
Indigenous roles, often played by White performers during the reign of the western, became so rare — less than one quarter of one percent of all speaking roles in a survey of 1,600 movies over 16 years — that Stacy L. Smith of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative named the “Killers” actor’s achievement “The Lily Gladstone Effect.”
Among the October study’s prescriptions: “nominate Lily Gladstone for all awards,” which has basically happened. “There should be lots of people like Lily Gladstone,” Smith said. Now, nominations are not enough. “I want her to win,” Smith said of the Oscar.
“Lily is a wonderful artist, and she has a presence and a face made for cinema,” Scorsese wrote in an email. “All I can tell you is that I would love to work with her again. Actors with that kind of talent are extremely rare.”
What is it like to be in the center of the awards maelstrom? “It’s wonderful, but it’s a lot to carry,” Gladstone said late last month, over a lunch of salmon, salad and green juice in a splendid hotel owned by co-star Robert De Niro. She appeared remarkably calm, happy even, despite the constant travel, punishing schedule and nonstop press. She had deglammed between television appearances, in black pants and top, and a bone-white wool coat, suggesting the newly obtained perk of being driven places. Gladstone had removed the substantial jewelry that she favors to promote Indigenous artists: “I’m giving my ears a rest.”
Almost every day erupts in another boldfaced moment. She met her acting idol, Cate Blanchett, at Cannes where Gladstone received a standing ovation. She sat between Daniel Day-Lewis (who knew her work in 2022’s “The Unknown Country”) and Patti Smith at the National Board of Review. Gladstone won that, too. Also, the New York Film Critics Circle…
Lily Gladstone becomes the first Indigenous actor to win a Golden Globe. pic.twitter.com/MH8O15oXlg
— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) January 8, 2024
Lily Gladstone was “very, very touched” by her high school classmates resurfacing her old yearbook superlative: “Most Likely to Win an Oscar.”
“They’re planning a watch party for the Oscars. They might watch it in our old high school theater.” https://t.co/c5wkhx21fb
— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) February 21, 2024
Lily Gladstone explains why she included Blackfeet language in her Golden Globe speech for “Killers of the Flower Moon.” pic.twitter.com/Kxw2sys8yS
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 8, 2024
Gladstone is the first Indigenous winner of this award.
She was named one of AP's Breakthrough Entertainers of 2023.https://t.co/7CTrSbIA0O
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 8, 2024
Thanks for the shout out @lily_gladstone. Our languages are precious and they are the greatest tools for our sovereignty. No one can deny who you are when you speak your language. Where ever you go, no matter how far, those old words carry the vibrations of our ancestors pic.twitter.com/uivU18Gbzd
— Ol’ Bitter Rez Dog (@DeadDogLake) January 8, 2024
H.E.Wolf
Thank you for featuring Lily Gladstone and the Blackfoot Confederacy!
I had the pleasure of seeing Lily Gladstone in 2017 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in “Off the Rails” – a reimagining of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure in which Ms. Gladstone played the character who was a cognate for Isabel. She was, of course, superb.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off_the_Rails_(play) [a write-up which doesn’t do full justice to the production]
raven
Wonderful job in an interesting role in a sad film.
NotMax
Honestly cannot recall whether or not have already mentioned this. Just in case, Why Is There Only One Species of Human?
Lecturer is very good at what his does, coming across as expert, affable and not reluctant to say when we don’t yet know something.
Baud
Don’t think I’ll ever see the movie, but happy for her success.
H.E.Wolf
@raven:
What raven said.
I read the book. Heartbreaking and infuriating. Very glad the story is becoming so well known because of the film.
eclare
@H.E.Wolf:
I read the book too, on the recommendation of someone here, I think Dorothy A Winsor.
Incredible book, but since I read it, most likely will not see the movie. I’m glad Lily Gladstone is getting recognition. I’ll be thrilled if she wins the Oscar.
sab
@NotMax: Are we different? I thought many of us interbred. Those quirky DNA sites say I am homo sapiens and also neanderthal, and my husband is homo sapiens and also cro magnon.
Africans are a lot more homosapiens, which should make racists’ heads in America explode, and also my RWNG brother’s
Soon Neanderthals will be the real Americans.
Cannot make this stuff up.
eclare
@sab:
I personally believe that we’re all cousins of some sort, descendants of the first people to crawl out of the Olduvai Gorge.
sab
@eclare: I believe that too.
Mike in NC
Wife loved the book. Movie was pretty good if a bit long.
Mousebumples
Glad to see her getting recognition!
We just finished Reservation Dogs, which definitely put a spotlight on rez kids. Also appreciated the framing on Native/reservation issues in the show Longmire. (some overlapping casting between the 2, though I’m not sure how much the latter made a point of casting Native actors)
Thanks for putting her in the (front page) spotlight!
cain
A poignant reminder that even as some of the world’s countrys are turning against it’s defenseless minorities. Some minorities like the indigenous populations are making their presence known through their amazing talent.
cain
@Mousebumples: Lou Diamond Phillips was amazing in that show. He still looks super young. All of the indigenous actors there were really good and really sets off the different tensions in the community. Really appreciated that show.
BruceFromOhio
Great post, thank you!
sab
@cain: Lou Diamond Phillips is not indiginous. He just looks it. He is an American, but his people are Philippino. Which says a lot about who came where when. A lot of east asians look american and vice versa. I think they are related. Boats and ancient migration. Whatever.
EtA We are a melting pot and always have been.
gwangung
Representation fucking matters. Even more so when you’ve been deprived and starved from it.
(And I also saw her at OSF….
We saw that last year with Everything Everywhere All At Once. Hope we see it again this year. Hollywood may be checking a box, but before we can have many, there MUST be a first.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Same here. I suffered through RRR last year because so many BJers asked me questions about it. The Hindu nationalist pro-RSS narrative completely went over the heads of the American audience and the critics who sang its raves.
schrodingers_cat
@cain: Like the BJP minimizing Adivasis and calling them Vanvasi not respecting their culture and trying Brahminize their animist religious practices.
satby
Things are lost when a language dies: nuances that arose from environment or social constructs mostly, and beautiful rhythms and phonemes used in one language but alien to others. That’s why the indigenous peoples all over the world are fighting to resurrect their languages, and why I study Gaeilge too. So glad to see this!
Starfish
@eclare: I read the book, but I would like to see the movie because it seemed like the cinematography was gorgeous. The movie also makes different choices than the book. In the book, you are always wondering who the bad guys are. From the reviews I have seen about the book, they made it quite clear. I wonder how that approach changes the story.
eversor
@sab:
Native American migration came from all the way up by Alaska from Asia and then went down through North America, Central America, and then South America.
cain
@sab:
Oh yeah that’s a good point ! I completely forgot about that and reverted to an older opinion of him back when.
He does seem like someone who can play a lot of roles.
Starfish
@eversor: Wait, is this the first time you have said something, and it hasn’t been completely whackadoodle? Good job.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@NotMax: I just read a book about pandemics that says all the other human species died off because of sickness (but not before we interbred a bit) that homo sapiens had more immunity to. The book is Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues by Jonathan Kennedy. Other prominent examples of plagues changing history: Besides the Black Death, which broke the back of feudalism, Europeans got a LOT of help conquering the New World from microbes.
zhena gogolia
@Starfish: It happens occasionally.
Matt McIrvin
@sab:
A lot of white supremacists already internalized that– they just decided that the special Neanderthal genes are what make them superior to full Homo sapiens. (Oh, it must be the plain-bellied Sneetches who are better, not the star-bellied Sneetches!)
They sometimes like to mention that Africans are the pure Homo sapiens and wait for a liberal to take offense so they can say “gotcha”.
eclare
@Matt McIrvin:
I don’t understand what the offense and the “gotcha” are supposed to be.
Eyeroller
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Most anthropologists think there were many other factors, such as climate and adapability and even degree of sociability.
Eyeroller
@Matt McIrvin: Where’s the love for the Denisovans? Asians tend to have little to no Neanderthal ancestry, but generally have Denisovan contributions comparable to European Neanderthal genetic contributions
NotMax
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
See: Americapox: The Missing Plague.
Fun and insightful.
@sab
I urge you (nicely) to watch the link in #3 at your convenience. It;’s worthwhile and covers what you speak.
sab
@NotMax: I watched about half of that, and there was no there there, and I was dreading the almost inevitable British racism that I felt was looming. That is me not it since I bailed so soon, but sorry, no.
Matt McIrvin
@eclare: “Stupid liberals are so stupid they assumed I was saying black people were less human, but in fact I was saying they were MORE human*! Checkmate libs!”
“*but that’s why I think they’re inferior”
It’s a lot like the exercises where white supremacists do some dumb random thing (like using the “OK” sign in photos or messily guzzling down cartons of milk on YouTube) so they can get their opponents to notice it as a dumb thing white supremacists do, then mock them for not realizing that they were doing it ironically just to yank your chain. OK, you do you I guess.