Apple/Paramount
Lily Gladstone, the star of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon and one of the favorites to win Best Actress at this year’s Academy Awards, was recently asked about the Kansas City Chiefs and their “Tomahawk chop” tradition.
Gladstone — who is, of course, a Native American — recently appeared at an awards ceremony hosted by the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and was asked about “the harmful depictions and references to Indians in media,” per Variety, particularly the Kansas City Chiefs, given their recent appearance in yet another Super Bowl.
“It’s not the name that bothers me. It’s hearing that damn Tomahawk chop,” Gladstone said during a recent panel conversation at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Virtuosos Awards.
“Every time, it’s a stark reminder of what Hollywood has done to us, because the Tomahawk chop directly ties to the soundtracks of old Westerns where we were not playing ourselves, or if we were, we were merely backdrop actors,” she explained. “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.”
In addition to Gladstone, the Best Actress category also includes Emma Stone (Poor Things), Carey Mulligan (Maestro), Sandra Huller (Anatomy of a Fall), and Annette Benning (Nyad). The category is famously missing Margot Robbie (Barbie), which many movie fans believe is the biggest snub of the 2024 Academy Awards.
While Gladstone ran as the odds-on favorite for most of late 2023 following the release of Killers of the Flower Moon, Emma Stone has since made up major ground and is now the betting favorite to win Best Actress for her work in Poor Things.
Killers of the Flower Moon, which was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Director (for Martin Scorsese) is now streaming on AppleTV+.