Lily Gladstone Makes History as the First Native American Nominated for an Acting Oscar

Lily Gladstone made made history on Tuesday when she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination for “Killers of the Flower Moon” and became the first Native American to be nominated for an Academy Award for acting. In the film, she plays Mollie Burkhart, an Osage woman married to a shifty white man (Leonardo DiCaprio) who is involved in the murders of her family and community.

Gladstone, who grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning, Montana, is of Blackfeet and Nez Perce heritage on her father’s side and white European on her mother’s. When she won the best actress in a drama Golden Globe earlier this month for “Killers,” she delivered part of her acceptance speech in Blackfeet language, saying, according to a CBS News report, “Hello my friends, my name is Eagle Woman, I’m from the Blackfeet Nation.”