Golden Globe-nominated actress Lily Gladstone opens up about the usage of pronouns in her Indigenous culture and how non-binary it is compared to other languages.  

Raised on the Blackfeet Nation reservation in Montana and being a mixed child from a father of Blackfeet and Nimiipuu descent and a white mother, The Killers of the Flower Moon star is openly confident about her Indigenous background. After her career launched in 2012’s Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian, Gladstone became a voice and representation for the native community through her roles as Indigenous characters in indie films. Gladstone, who identifies as she/they, explains how the usage of her pronouns is connected to her background. According to Gladstone in a People interview, “in most Native languages, most Indigenous languages, Blackfeet included, there are no gendered pronouns. There is no he/she, there’s only they.” 

“It doesn’t happen as much anymore”, she continued, “but there’ve been several times in my life where I’ve been speaking to a northern Cheyenne-first language speaker [or another] Indigenous-first language speaker where they’ll accidentally misgender you when they’re talking to you. And then they’ll get embarrassed about it, but it’s because they’ve learned English later.” 

Gladstone adds that her pronoun use is “partly a way of decolonizing gender for myself.” When it comes to gendered award categories, the actress recognizes its positive effect in that it “has helped from keeping women actors from a lot of erasure” but, “if there’s not a ‘director-ess,’ then there shouldn’t be actresses. There’s no ‘producer-ess,’ there’s no ‘cinematographer-ess.’ ”

Gladstone’s recent role as Mollie Burkhart in Martin Scorsese’s film about the Osage murders has earned her nominations for Golden Globe and Critics Choice awards for Best Actress; she has been named Best Actress by the National Board of Review and New York Film Critics Circle.