Lily Gladstone’s Historic Golden Globe Speech Sends Searches For Blackfeet Language Skyrocketing

According to Looper’s research on Google Trends, the search for “What is Blackfeet language” went up by 3,100 percent, while the search for “Blackfoot language” increased by 3,450 percent. Searches for “Lily Gladstone language” shot up 5,000 percent, while searches for “Black feet language,” “What is black feet language,” and “Blackfeet” went up 2,600 percent, 1,000 percent, and 1,650 percent, respectively. People also searched for “Black feet meaning,” “Black foot tribe,” and “Blackfoot Indian” (the latter of which uses a dated nomenclature for Natives), with the first two rising by 300 percent in search trends and the last rising 200 percent.

These searches may have been related to the closed captioning provided for the telecast on streaming. As Teen Vogue pointed out, the captions referred to Gladstone’s words as “a global language” — as opposed to recognizing its North American routes and its connection to the Algonquian language family.