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Chatting about the film over Zoom, Gladstone laughed when informed of another first: between “Killers� and her breakthrough role in Kelly Reichardt’s “Certain Women,� Gladstone would seem to be the only person in film history to play love scenes with both Leonardo DiCaprio and Kristen Stewart.

“I’ve been the little spoon for both of them,� she said gravely. “Oh no, sorry, I was Kristen’s big spoon (in ‘Certain Women’). She was on the back of the horse.�

If there were truly justice in awards season, Gladstone would have already been tapped for “Certain Women,� in which she inhabited, to use her words, “a character who had to fill a lot of space with very little dialogue.�

Playing an introverted ranch hand who develops an unrequited crush on Stewart’s night school instructor — and ends up taking her for an impromptu nighttime trot through a darkened parking lot — Gladstone essayed a heartbreaking shyness. “That movie was about the placement of an Indigenous woman in a romantic situation,� said Gladstone, who also worked with Reichardt on her followup, “First Cow.�

“It was a leading role outside of a formulaic cowboy-and-Indians thing.�

“Certain Women� wasn’t a smash, but it had its fans, including Scorese, who has said that Gladstone was always his first choice to play “Killers’� most important role. Gladstone’s character is Mollie Burkhart, an Osage woman living in Oklahoma in the 1920s whose tragic real-life story provided David Grann’s historical source novel with its emotional core. A proud sister, daughter and community leader who lived self-sufficiently following her first marriage, Mollie ended up wedding a white settler named Ernest (played in the film by DiCaprio); afterwards, she found herself plagued by a mysterious illness only to learn that her husband was making her ill in an attempt to secure her land and money — a betrayal with a wider allegorical significance.

“Leo and I have talked about (the film) in terms of larger archetypes,� said Gladstone, who grew up on a Blackfoot Nation reservation in Montana.

“From everything I know about Osage culture, women are the ones with roots in the Earth. They’re the only ones who can till the earth, or to dig. Men can’t break ground. Only women can break ground, because that’s us. So the greater analogy would have to do with the exploitation of oil resources and the impact it’s had globally on all of us, this unchecked, unfettered capitalistic greed … combine that analogy with the idea of respect for women. We say we love our planet and yet we extract everything from her at the same time.�

Certainly there is something draining about the dynamic between Mollie and Ernest, who may be the least appealing character DiCaprio has ever played: a sullen lump who spends much of his screen time either scheming or sulking in the shadows.

“He’s kind of simple,� said Gladstone, explaining what she says are the complicated dynamics of her character being simultaneously attracted to and wary of the white interloper in her community’s midst. “I have a language teacher named Chris Cote and he’s on the front lines of language revitalization for the Osage, which is not just about words and phrases, but bringing back a world view through stories. Early on in my lessons, he taught me this trickster story and I realized that was it; that was how Molly was going to view Ernest … she had a blind spot that he could hide in. She calls him a coyote, which is a trickster figure.

“Those trickster stories are funny when you’re a kid,� she continued. “As you get older, though, you learn that they’re cautionary tales.�

Gladstone knows her movie history, and says that one of the reasons she was eager to work with Scorsese was his willingness to play with and revise cinematic iconography.

“None of his references for this films were Westerns,� she explained. “They were all classic melodramas like ‘The Heiress,’ or ‘A Place in the Sun’ or ‘Giant.’� (Gladstone is hoping to work with the Navajo photographer Pamela Paul on a shoot that would recast her as Elizabeth Taylor, who co-starred in that film.)

She’s aware of the around “Killers,� which has become a lightning rod for discussion from every possible angle, from the question of whether it’s too long at three and a half hours to whether Scorsese is the right artist to take on issues of Indigenous representation. For her part, Gladstone thinks the director approached the material in thoughtful ways. “There are a lot of very modern images of Native Americans in this film,� she said. “One of my favourite shots, which might even be archival footage, is of an Osage man in a plane.�

As for the film’s controversial ending, she admires Scorsese for refusing to capitulate to convention; the choice to leave the material unresolved is the source of the movie’s power.

“You know, only died in 1986,� said Gladstone. �I was born in August of 1986. It shows how recent all of this is. We’re not so far removed.�