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 …
Pop Culture Open Thread: Lily Gladstone Has Earned Her MomentPost + Comments (32)
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