Lily Gladstone Critiques Kansas City Chiefs for ‘Mockery’ Tomahawk Chant

Lily Gladstone thinks the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers should both be held “accountable” for their use of offensive Native American imagery.

“The 49ers are based on the Gold Rush in California, which was an incredibly brutal period time for California Indians. So there’s that,” Gladstone, 37, said during the Friday, February 16, episode of the “Variety Awards Circuit” podcast. “And then, the Chiefs. There are a lot of ways that you could wear the name ‘chief.’ … It’s not the name that bothers me. It’s hearing that damn tomahawk chop.”

Gladstone, who made history last month as the first Native American actress to earn a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her role in Killers of the Flower Moon, explained that the chant is a “stark reminder of what Hollywood has done to us” and how media has profited on inaccurate Indigenous stereotypes.

“That tomahawk chop goes directly to the sounds of, ‘Oh, here come the Indians’ in these old Westerns where we were not playing ourselves, or if we were, we were backdrop actors pretty much there to get shot,” she continued. “It’s this ‘claiming’ of that sound and saying it’s in ‘honor’ and the commodification of who we are as people.”

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Gladstone referenced an alleged study done around 2020 that asked people’s opinions about the Washington Commanders changing their names from the Redskins, which the actress claimed saw 40 percent of Americans believing Native Americans didn’t “exist” in today’s society.

“They thought we were basically all wiped out,” she claimed. “People don’t bring us into a modern age. If we don’t look and behave how we are in those Westerns then we must not actually be Native.”

Gladstone emphasized seeing so little real representation of her culture juxtaposed against a “fervent fandom” like the NFL, claiming a “strange” and inaccurate identity of Native Americans is damaging.

“That tomahawk chop just does really feel like a mockery and it’s directly correlated to the way that we see ourselves as Native people,” she continued. “Our kids have the highest suicide rate of any demographic in the country. … When you don’t see yourself represented —or you do and it’s either fetishized or distorted or otherwise mocking kind of way — it shapes your send of self and what you’re capable of doing in the world.”

Gladstone, who is of Siksikaitsitapi and Niimiipuu heritage, added that it’s “great” to “love” the game of football and its players, but the behavior still “hurts.”

The Chiefs have notably faced pushback over their name, arrowhead logo and tomahawk chants over the years. Last year, a protest was held outside the Super Bowl LVII stadium in Glendale, Arizona, where the Chiefs faced off against the Philadelphia Eagles, to “stop the chop” and “change the name” of the team, per The Guardian.

Chiefs fans were also banned from wearing fake headdresses and certain types of face paint “that references or appropriates American Indian cultures and traditions” at their home stadium in Kansas City in 2020, according to NPR.

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Gladstone, meanwhile, is gearing up for the Oscars, which will air on Sunday, March 10. In January, she became the first Indigenous woman to take home a win for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama at the Golden Globes. During her acceptance speech, Gladstone spoke in Blackfeet language before switching to English to note the “historic” win.

“I love everyone in this room right now. I don’t have words. I just spoke a bit in Blackfeet language — a beautiful community and nation that raised me and encouraged me to keep going and doing this,” she explained. “My mom — who even though she’s not Blackfeet — worked tirelessly to get our language into our classrooms. I’m so grateful that I could speak even a little bit of my language, which I’m not fluent enough in because Native actors used to speak their lines in English and then the sound mixers would run them backwards to accomplish Native language on camera.”