Lily Gladstone Chokes Up Accepting an Award from Leonardo DiCaprio at Variety's Power of Women

hello my friends my name is Lily Gladstone I come from the black feet Nation um Leo thank you for that um I uh I can't thank this guy enough his art and activism speaking of that is one that uh inspires me your uh your dedication to getting at the root of things not just as an actor but as an activist your dedication to uplifting indigenous Le Grassroots organizations is pretty badass [Applause] um and this film whether you've seen it or not yet is uh has undergone killers of the flower moon has undergone so many different iterations and at one point it's uh Leo wasn't playing this complicated villain he was playing the uh the kind of first I guess investigator for the newly formed FBI uh the uh Tom white the essential white Savior and that was of no interest to him and instead bringing this complicated villain into the Forefront brought Molly Kyle her beautiful sisters the oage community out of the periphery I've heard early drafts maybe had three scenes uh deeply developed with Molly um and this complicated love this unhealthy love serves as an analogy for the ongoing treatment of native people's worldwide um particularly those of us who are resourcer um Le you understand that uh Grassroots organizations indigenous front lines people are the ones who are holding the line of the most valuable resources of this Earth and I would add to that that in our indigen indigenous communities our most valuable resource is our women is our children the beautiful women that are sitting at this table of which Leo you are the only dude sitting there good on you these ladies uh the national indigenous Women's Resource Center and I go back a long way I have always had a very peacemeal career but I've always known that acting is my activism when I was struggling to pay a $300 a month rent in 201 um holding a lot of different jobs taking what I could Lucy Sim Simpson a beautiful gorgeous woman sitting here um from the Navajo Nation D um Lucy saw work that I had done with her children in a camp using arts and activism to bring out and strengthen their voices um a lot of the work that this beautiful organization does is in prevention um native women four out of five in our lifetimes will experience some form of violence at the hand of um a romantic partner or somebody who wants to be um and a lot of the prevention work is going into communities starting with kids teaching them their value their voice uh what healthy love looks like and I was there with some acting Tools in My Little Theater napsack that I just picked up in college and Lucy saw uh me working with her kids not just her community's kids her own Flesh and Blood children and invited me to play um the incredible Deborah Parker tribal chairwoman of teleop nation and a board member for niwrc and a Survivor herself um in a documentary theater piece liver of a full moon now backtracking a little bit to understand the scope of the work that these women do and to understand kind of the irony and how it ties to this man on stage stepping away from playing an FBI agent had he done that how unfortunate it would have been for audiences to walk away under the impression that the FBI are the saviors of native women we know that is not the truth tribal governments in this nation even though our treaties that have been signed with tribal peoples are the whole reason that the United States even exists you need to enter into treaty with other nations to give your own validity and yet these treaties are not honored um over the course of colonization the last several hundred years our inherent sovereignty as tribal Nations has been Stripped Away further and further and further to the point that our own tribal governments our own Tribal Police if you are not enrolled in that tribe on that reservation and you commit a violent crime against a native person nobody can prosecute you except for the FBI states don't have jurisdiction on tribal land tribes have limited jurisdiction and it's only the federal government so this epidemic of hundreds thousands of missing murdered indigenous women children to Spirit relatives the only people who have any authority to do anything do nothing and the people who who are left to do anything about it are these women here women who have children in our communities I'm sorry women that young [Applause] [Music] girls young girls that we know and love whose murders remain unsolved um these women are not just doing the task workk of taking care of ourselves we are uplifting others and I W niwrc National indigenous Women's Resource Center supports grassroot Le organizations all across the country there are 574 federally recognized tribes in this nation and we all experience this epidemic we need a large large group of people we need a huge task force and one thing that niwrc is doing is bringing these stories forward of survivors in front of lawmakers in front of Congress in front of people who actually have the power to enact some real change to give our people just what we need to protect ourselves bare minimum so I encourage you all please to look into what they do to look into all of their sister organizations um and when I was doing my early work with niwrc one thing that was put in Mary Katherine Nagel's beautiful play one thing that Lucy says often to kids from Northern Cheyenne reservation where her children live in where she raised her family it's a Northern Cheyenne saying um a nation is not defeated until the hearts of its women are on the ground so it is our work to uplift each other and uh ladies I know that we are far from defeated thank you so much for everything that you [Applause] do

Channel: Variety

Views: 184,280

Keywords: Variety, Variety Studio

Id: YZbENoIHsaA

Length: 8min 34sec (514 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 17 2023