Lily Gladstone has wondered why it has taken "this long" for a Native American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award.
The 37-year-old actress has become the first indigenous woman to be nominated for Best Actress at the upcoming 96th Academy Awards after wowing with her role as Mollie in Killers of the Flower Moon, but argued that such a milestone should have happened before now, especially because of how many films are shot on her homeland.
She told Deadline: "I also just know that I'm not going to be the last. Why am I the first? Why did it have to take this long for me to be the first Indigenous North American? Most of the films that show up in these categories are shot on Indigenous land in North America, and it's taken this long."
Lily arranged to hear the nominations in Osage County on the Osage reservation when they were announced on Tuesday (January 23).
She explained: "It just felt like I wanted to be as close to Mollie as I could be."
The actress — who is up against Emma Stone, Annette Bening, Sandra Hüller, and Carey Mulligan for the coveted award — won a Golden Globe for her role earlier this year and revealed that she wants to dig deeper into her heritage to discover more untold stories of women that she thinks "need" to be put on screen.
She said: "There are a lot of Native women at different points in history that have been groundbreaking for whatever fields that they've been in, but have gone uncelebrated, or just basically unknown.
"There's definitely some biographies that need to be out there, because young Native women need to know that it's been Native women who have shaped whatever field they're in: music; science; law. There are just a ton of stories, and whether it's me embodying these or me lending my name and some of my thoughts, even if it's just notes and encouragement to help lift these stories, that's honestly, I feel like the greatest gift of all of this."