Lily Gladstone was born in 1986 and raised on a Blackfeet reservation in Browning, Montana. Their father is of Nimiipuu and Blackfeet heritage and their mother is white.
Life on the reservation was removed from the outside world and was all about community. “It was very rural … We were snowed-in nine months of the year, so people watched a lot of movies,” Gladstone told The Telegraph. “My memories of early childhood were sitting on the laps of elders, spending a lot of time with grandparents, great-aunties, listening to stories, bringing firewood to elders.” They spent much of their time on the reservation learning about the Blackfeet, which included using traditional techniques to gather mountain water and harvest plants for medicine.
Gladstone’s mother, although white, pushed the community to continue to teach its children about the Blackfeet traditions. When Gladstone was in second grade, her mother successfully campaigned to bring Blackfeet language classes to her child’s school. Years later, Gladstone honored the language she had learned on the reservation, speaking in Blackfoot during her Golden Globes acceptance speech in 2024. “She brought her ancestors and her people up with her up to that podium, and she’s sharing it with us all,” said Robert Hall, director of Blackfeet Native American Studies Program in the Browning Public School District, to NPR.
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