Lily Gladstone is doubling down on her criticism of the Kansas City Chiefs after speaking out about Native American “misrepresentation” at Super Bowl LVIII.
The “Killers of the Flower Moon” star, who is the first-ever Native American to be nominated in the Best Actress category at the Oscars, explained on Variety’s Awards Circuit podcast that both the Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers should be held “accountable” for their team names, but Gladstone especially has an issue with the Chiefs’ controversial Tomahawk chop.
“Honestly, you could hold both teams accountable,” Gladstone, 37, said in the episode released Thursday.
“The 49ers are based on the California Gold Rush, which was an incredibly brutal time for California Indians. And then the Chiefs. There are many ways that you could interpret the name ‘chief.’ It’s not the name that bothers me. It’s hearing that damn Tomahawk chop.”
The “Tomahawk chop” is a gesture and chant Chiefs fans perform to show support for the team, by raising their arm up and down in a chopping motion.
“Every time, it’s a stark reminder of what Hollywood has done to us because the Tomahawk chop directly ties to the sounds of old Westerns where we were not playing ourselves, or if we were, we were merely backdrop actors,” Gladstone explained.
“It’s this ‘claiming’ of that sound and saying it’s in ‘honor’ and the commodification of who we are as people,” she added. “It’s great to love the game and your players, but it still hurts.”
The Chiefs have longtime faced backlash for not rebranding in an era where the Washington Redskins officially became the Commanders in February 2022 and the MLB’s Cleveland Indians became the Guardians in November 2021.
For their part, the Chiefs banned fans from painting their faces and wearing headdresses to games in 2020, and a year later retired their mascot, a horse named Warpaint.
Gladstone’s latest criticism comes after she spoke about her record-breaking, yet “long overdue” Oscar nod last week at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
“But that’s a lot of history and a lot of years of exclusion or misrepresentation, and I mean Super Bowl’s tomorrow,” she said. “We haven’t come that far if we look at one of the teams that’s playing.”
Jimmy Kimmel hosts the Oscars on March 10 on ABC.
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