Lily Gladstone Criticizes ‘Delusional’ Portrayal of American West in ‘Yellowstone’

Lily Gladstone, who’s earning Oscar buzz for her role in the upcoming Martin Scorsese film Killers of the Flower Moon, has two strong words for Yellowstone.

In a new New York magazine interview, the actor — whose father is Blackfeet and Nez Perce — says that Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan’s version of the American West in the Paramount Network series is “delusional” and “deplorable.”

“No offense to the Native talent in that,” she added. “I auditioned several times. That’s what we had.”

Gladstone told New York about the “double-edged sword” in the authorship of Native American stories. “You want to have more Natives writing Native stories; you also want the masters to pay attention to what’s going on,” she observed. “American history is not history without Native history.”

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In Killers of the Flower Moon — due for release on October 20 — Gladstone plays Mollie Burkhart, an Osage woman whom Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest weds in a ploy to get her family’s oil royalties in 1920s Oklahoma. The original version of the script focused more on the law enforcement investigating murders on the Osage Nation Reservation, but a “great rewrite” midway through the pandemic — as Gladstone called it — put more of the focus on the Osage.

“It’s not a white-savior story,” she added. “It’s the Osage saying, ‘Do something. Here’s money. Come help us.’”

As Entertainment Weekly notes, Yellowstone has faced blowback for its depictions of violence against Indigenous women, its inclusion of white characters in Native spiritual practices, and the disputed Indigenous heritage of star Kesley Asbille.

Liza Black, a citizen of Cherokee Nation and an associate professor of history and Native American and Indigenous Studies at Indiana University, cited many of the same critiques in a High Country News essay last year — and also pointed out that Yellowstone co-opted the history of forced sterilizations conducted on Indigenous women for a storyline for Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly), a white character. “Sheridan’s hysterical distortion insults all Native women, but especially the survivors of forced sterilizations,” she wrote.

Black went on: “At the root of all of Yellowstone’s ills — the violence, the colonized relationships to Montana, the casting scandal, the erasure of Native history even as they include Native people — is a clear desire on the part of Sheridan, [Kevin] Costner, Paramount and Hollywood itself to maintain control of the established narrative they have offered Indian Country for over a century now.”