The Millstone Times - December 2022

Sacheen Littlefeather’s Controversial Activism By: Nazli Mohideen

Sacheen Littlefeather, an advocate for the rights of Native Americans, was well-known for her speech at the 1973 Oscars. Littlefeather attended the ceremony on behalf of Marlon Brando but refused to accept the Best Actor award for his role in The Godfather, a film released the year prior. “I'm Apache and I am president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee”, Lit tlefeather said. “I'm representing Marlon Brando this evening and he has asked me to tell you…that he very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award. And the reasons for this being are the treat ment of American Indians today by the film industry.” At the time, Hollywood consistently represented Native Americans in film with the use of dangerous stereotypes. The misrepresentation of Native Americans often included how they acted, where they lived and what they wore. As the Western genre became increasingly popular, this misrepresentation only increased, too. Native Americans were typically portrayed as being uncivilized and violent. A couple of months after the Oscars ceremony, Brando shared his thoughts about minorities in the media during an interview saying, “I don't think people realize what the motion picture industry has done to the American Indian, and a matter of fact, all ethnic groups…Indian children, seeing Indians represented as savage, ugly, vicious, treacherous, drunken—they grow up only with a negative image of themselves, and it lasts a lifetime.”

Littlefeather also mentioned the “recent happenings” at Wounded Knee during her speech. Wounded Knee is a small town on a reservation in South Dakota. In 1890, U.S. troops killed hundreds of Indigenous men, women and children on the reservation out of fear that there would soon be an uprising. Starting on February 27, 1973, supporters of the Indian American Movement took control of Wounded Knee for 71 days to speak out against conditions at the reservation that were put in place by the government. Despite Littlefeather’s speech being just a minute long, it was met with mixed reactions from audience members, many of whom booed her off stage. Her short-lived career in Hollywood was officially over after being blacklisted, but her activism continued. However, her sisters Rosalind Cruz and Trudy Orlandi said Littlefeather lied about coming from a White Mountain Apache and Yaqui Indian background. In fact, they both said their family has no Native American heritage at all. They also said Littlefeather lied about being abused by her parents and growing up in poverty. Littlefeather passed on October 2, 2022, following a battle with cancer, but shortly before her death, David Rubin, President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, wrote an apology to Littlefeather regarding the 1973 Oscars and the treatment she faced afterwards. “You made a powerful statement that continues to remind us of the necessity of respect and the importance of human dignity… You are forever respect fully engrained in our history.”

Sources: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/08/the-academy-apologizes-to-sacheen-littlefeather-who-refused-marlon-brandos-1973-oscar https://deadline.com/2021/04/sacheen-littlefeather-claims-she-was-blacklisted-by-hollywood-after-brando-oscars-snub-1234743075/ https://www.history.com/news/wounded-knee-massacre-facts https://libapps.salisbury.edu/nabb-online/exhibits/show/native-americans-then-and-now/introduction/early-films https://www.newsweek.com/marlon-brando-boycotted-oscars-native-americans-418545 https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-63114459 http://aaspeechesdb.oscars.org/link/045-1/ https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/sacheen-littlefeather-native-american-ancestry-1234616464/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sacheen-littlefeather-native-american-civil-rights-activist-declined-marlin-brando-godfather-oscar-dead-75/

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