Gladstone is of Siksikaitsitapi and Niimiipuu heritage and the first Native American to earn a Best Actress Oscar nomination.
Lily Gladstone, who last month made history as the first Native American actress to earn a Best Actress Oscar nomination, is sharing her thoughts on the Kansas City Chiefs' controversial tomahawk chop as well as the San Francisco 49ers' mascot.
The 37-year-old actress opened up about the subject during an interview on Variety's Awards Circuit podcast, in which she offered the harmful implications of the Chiefs' chant rooted in racist tropes. And on the subject of the Super Bowl, Gladstone also took aim at the 49ers.
"Honestly, you could hold both teams accountable. The 49ers are based on the California Gold Rush, which was an incredibly brutal time for California Indians. And then the Chiefs. There are many ways that you could interpret the name 'chief,'" Gladstone says on the podcast. "It’s not the name that bothers me. It’s hearing that damn tomahawk chop. Every time, it's a stark reminder of what Hollywood has done to us, because the tomahawk chop directly ties to the sounds of old Westerns where we were not playing ourselves, or if we were, we were merely backdrop actors pretty much there to get shot. It's this 'claiming' of that sound and saying it's in 'honor' and the commodification of who we are as people. It's great to love the game and your players, but it still hurts."
Gladstone, who is of Siksikaitsitapi and Niimiipuu heritage and stars in the Martin Scorsese-directed crime western Killers of the Flower Moon, brought up a subject that's not foreign to the Chiefs and other North American professional sports teams for the way it depicts Native Americans. The racial justice reckoning in 2020 ultimately led to Cleveland's baseball team dropping Indians as its mascot and adopting the Guardians in 2021. That move came after the NFL's Washington team dropped Redskins and ultimately adopted the Commanders nickname. There's been similar calls for Major League Baseball's Atlanta team to drop the Braves mascot, as well as the use of the Tomahawk chop, which purportedly originated in the 1980s when Florida State University sports teams -- under the Seminoles mascot -- began using the chant.
For their part, the Chiefs created the American Indian Community Working Group, a collective liaison with the Native community working with the Chiefs to "promote an awareness and understanding of Native cultures and tribes in the region."
It's also not the first time Gladstone has talked about the way Native Americans are misrepresented. She broached the subject at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival ahead of Super Bowl LVIII. Calling a Native American's Best Actress nomination for an Oscar "long overdue," Gladstone added that being overlooked goes beyond Hollywood.
"But that's a lot of history and a lot of years of exclusion or misrepresentation, and I mean Super Bowl's tomorrow," she said, via People. "We haven't come that far if we look at one of the teams that's playing."
RELATED CONTENT:
