Before she was cast as the anguished center of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, before she played a grief-stricken mother on Reservation Dogs, and before her breakout role in Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women, Lily Gladstone taught school children about Native American history. She taught while in character as part of an educational theater program—the kind of steady work you’d feel lucky to get as a young actor (which Gladstone was at the time), even if it wasn’t what you dreamed of doing as an acting student (which she had been at the University of Montana not long before)—touring alone to school auditoriums, trading lines with a prerecorded track about having to shed her culture while a multimedia presentation was projected behind her. She played Alice, a Navajo girl who endured an abusive, assimilationist education in order to become a nurse. The part didn't reflect Gladstone's background—her father is Blackfeet and Nez Perce, her mother white, and her childhood was split between Montana’s Blackfeet Reservation and Seattle—but it wasn’t entirely distant, either. Her grandmother had attended one of those infamous boarding schools, Chemawa, from which hundreds of children never returned; they are buried there in marked and unmarked graves.
This story is from the August 28 - September 10, 2023 edition of New York magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the August 28 - September 10, 2023 edition of New York magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
THE LOST CITY
Their homes were destroyed. Their communities are gone. How can the people of Los Angeles rebuild?
One Last Rodeo
Palestinian American stand-up comic Mo Amer made a Netflix series loosely based on his experience. Just as he was writing the final season, October 7 happened.
Turn Down the Heat
Seven months after opening, Eel Bar has become a less buzzy, better version of itself.
SARAH MCNALLY'S BOOK CLUB
The owner of the McNally Jackson literary empire is reshaping the city's reading life.
Dance-Floor Euphoria
FKA Twigs celebrates pleasure and freedom.
The Banality of Evil
Fernanda Torres carries a political thriller about Brazilian dictatorship.
A Cabin in the Middle of St. Marks Place
Charles FitzGerald and Kathy Cerick transformed a seven-bedroom SRO loft by hand-with a nonstop supply of reclaimed wood.
Chins Are In
Hypermasculine jawlines are all the rage in Hollywood. They only cost $12,000.
Beyond the End
David Lynch spent his five-decade film and TV career contemplating life, death, and the indescribable realms in between.
Kendrick Lamar, From BLM Symbol to Super Bowl Star
THE ENTHUSIASTIC RESPONSE to Kendrick Lamar's music over the past 12 years has been driven in part by the perception that he's a political vessel.