Lily Gladstone wonders why it took so long for a Native American woman to get an Oscar nomination

This morning, Lily Gladstone became the first Native American woman to be nominated for Best Lead Actress at the Academy Awards—meaning she would also be the first to win, if she wins. Gladstone’s nomination came from her work as Mollie Burkhart in Martin Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon, about how a conspiracy of envious white men murdered their way through the wealthy Osage Nation.

Reacting to the news of her Oscar nomination (via Deadline), which she heard about while at the Osage reservation in Oklahoma (explaining that she wanted to be “as close to Mollie as I could be”), Gladstone said that, in addition to being “so honored,” she wondered why no Native American actresses had been honored by the Motion Picture Academy until her. “Why did it have to take this long for me to be the first Indigenous North American?” She asked, noting that “most of the films that show up in these categories are shot on Indigenous land in North America” anyway, and yet “it’s taken this long.”

Still, while she is the first, Gladstone is adamant that she is “not going to be the last,” and she hopes her Oscar nomination is “inspiring to other young Native actresses out there who are excited about just the moment of having this film out, and of having the Globes go the way that they did.” For those who only keep up with the major awards shows, Gladstone is referring to the fact that, at the Golden Globes earlier this month, she became the first Indigenous woman to win the Best Actress award. That, perhaps, was foreshadowing continued success for her as this year’s awards season goes on.

We’ll know how it shakes out when the Academy Awards are held on March 10.