Lily Gladstone, the woke actress who was nominated for an Oscar over her performance in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” just went on a rant about the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs during an appearance at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Particularly, she attacked fans of the Kansas City Chiefs for their “tomahawk chop” gesture.
Speaking to Variety about the fans and the gesture, she had particular enmity and anger for the tomahawk chop, though she also found a way to attack the 49ers as also being problematic and needing to be held “accountable,” claiming that their team name is bad because the California Gold Rush was a bad time for Native Americans in California.
Beginning her comments, Gladstone attacked the names of both teams as being offensive. Doing so, she told Variety, “Honestly, you could hold both teams accountable. 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.’”
Continuing, she then went on the attack against the Tomahawk chop gesture that Chiefs fans do, connecting it to old movies she also finds offensive. She said, “It’s not just the name that bothers me. It’s hearing that damn Tomahawk chop. 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.“
Sticking on that point, she continued to attack the chop, and even saying that it “hurts,” telling Variety, “It’s this ‘claiming’ of that sound and saying it’s in ‘honor’ and the commodification of who we are as people. It’s great to love the game and your players, but it still hurts.”
Gladstone’s comments on the matter come alongside Native American activists demanding that the Kansas City Chiefs change their name. The AP quotes one activist, Phil Gover, as saying, “There’s no other group in this country subjected to this kind of cultural degradation.” Gover added, “It’s demeaning. It tells Native kids that the rest of society, the only thing they ever care to know about you and your culture are these mocking minstrel shows.”
Similarly to Gladstone, another activist, Rhonda LeValdo, attacked the way Chiefs fans celebrate their team, saying, “We weren’t even allowed to be Native American. We weren’t allowed to practice our culture. We weren’t allowed to wear our clothes. But it’s OK for Kansas City fans to bang a drum, to wear a headdress and then to act like they’re honoring us? That doesn’t make sense.” LeValdo also said, “I’ve spent so much of my personal time and money on this issue. I really hoped that our kids wouldn’t have to deal with this. But here we go again.”
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The Chiefs have renamed their horse, formerly named Warpaint, and have generally barred fans from wearing Native American headdresses or face paint in the Cheifs’ home stadium, though some fans do so anyway.