Gladstone's role a career highlight

No it's not the Oscar-nominated Scorsese flick 'Killers of the Flower Moon,' but 'Fancy Dance'

- RADHEYAN SIMONPILLAI

Last December, Lily Gladstone accepted a prize from IndieWire; it was one of the many trophies she picked up during the most recent awards season on her way to becoming the first Native American to be nominated for a lead performance at the Academy Awards.

She spoke from the podium about the "absolute highlight" of her career, a movie Gladstone described as "the best work" she had ever done for "the greatest, most visionary, most committed" director alongside a co-star with whom she enjoyed the "best chemistry."

Gladstone knew her audience would assume she was talking about Martin Scorsese's period piece "Killers of the Flower Moon," the awards season juggernaut in which she gave a devastating performance as Mollie Burkhart, whose Osage Nation community was targeted by profiteering murderers. The Blackfeet and Nimíipuu actor was actually talking about "Fancy Dance," Erica Tremblay's gripping and achingly beautiful coming-of-age drama about Seneca-Cayuga women on the run from the authorities.

In it, Gladstone stars opposite former CBC Kids contributor Isabel Deroy-Olson as Jax, a fiercely protective aunt stealing away with her niece to dance at a powwow, despite oppressive forces closing in on them.

Gladstone described "Fancy Dance" as the movie that filled the void left by "Killers." Scorsese's masterful epic focused on the perpetrators of colonial violence. Tremblay's loving film-which she wrote while living in Six Nations in Ontario during a Cayuga language immersion program- honours matriarchal relationships in Indigenous communities and the women's refusal to be limited to the role of victims.

And yet, when Gladstone made her comments, "Fancy Dance" had yet to land a distribution deal, nearly a year after premiering to raves at Sundance. It was a damning indictment of Hollywood's interests as far as Indigenous narratives are concerned.