This has been Lily Gladstone’s year. During the 2024 award season so far, the actress has won an impressive number of statues for her starring role in Killers of the Flower Moon, including a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, and a SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role in a Motion Picture.

And now, at the biggest and most glamorous ceremony all, the 96th annual Academy Awards, Gladstone is in the running for Best Actress, a win that would, once again, make history.

Gladstone arrived on the Oscars red carpet wearing a custom Gucci gown made in collaboration with Joe Big Mountain of Ironhouse Quillwork. She wore her long brown hair down in soft waves.

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At the 81st Golden Globe Awards earlier this year, Gladstone prompted headlines when she became the first Indigenous person to win Best Actress. During her acceptance speech, she started off by honouring her culture and speaking in her native tongue.

“Hello my friends,” Gladstone said in Blackfeet. “My name is Eagle Woman. I am Blackfeet. I love you!”

“I love everyone in this room. I don’t have words. I just spoke a bit of Blackfeet language—the beautiful community, nation that raised me, that encouraged me to keep going, doing this,” she continued in English. “I’m 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. I’m so grateful that I can speak even a little bit of my language, which I’m not fluent in, up here. Because 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,” Gladstone added.

After thanking Killers of the Flower Moon directer and co-writer Martin Scorsese, and co-stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro for “changing things” in the industry and for always “being such allies,” Gladstone then went on to dedicate her win to Native children everywhere.

“This is for every little res 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 each other. So, thank you all so much,” she finished in her speech.

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