Sacheen Littlefeather, who claimed to be Apache and whose 1973 speech on the Academy Awards denounced the remedy of Native Individuals in Hollywood, faked her racial id for many years, her sisters allege.
Littlefeather, who died on Oct. 3, gave her speech rather than Marlon Brando, who declined the award for Finest Actor that 12 months after taking part in Vito Corleone in “The Godfather.”
Her phrases have been so incendiary that John Wayne needed to be restrained from interrupting the speech, and boos echoed all through the auditorium in the course of the speech.
Her sisters have now come out and denounced her claims of indigeneity in an interview quoted in a San Francisco Chronicle opinion column. Littlefeather, born Mary Louise Cruz, was, like them, a Mexican-American, Rosalind Cruz and Trudy Orlandi allege.
The sisters’ father, Manuel Cruz, was born in Oxnard, California, to Mexican dad and mom, Ms. Cruz and Ms. Orlandi say.
Ms. Cruz stated it was “insulting to my dad and mom” and “disgusting to the heritage of the tribal individuals,” in response to the Chronicle column.
Ms. Orlandi pinned Littlefeather’s declare of being Apache on a want for status.
“I imply, you’re not gonna be a Mexican American princess. You’re gonna be an American Indian princess. It was extra prestigious to be an American Indian than it was to be Hispanic in her thoughts,” Ms. Orlandi instructed the Chronicle.
The 2 additionally declare that key elements of Littlefeather’s claimed upbringing have been fabricated alongside along with her standing as a Native American.
For instance, the 2 allege that Littlefeather lifted her accounts of being abused by an alcoholic, mentally in poor health father from her father’s personal upbringing.
Ms. Orlandi and Ms. Cruz additionally defined the that means behind Littlefeather’s assumed first title. “Sacheen,” the 2 stated, was presumably impressed by the spools of thread bought by the Sasheen Ribbon Co.
Ms. Orlandi dismissed Littlefeather’s biographical account of the place her assumed surname got here from.
“That she danced in entrance of my father and all the time wore a feather in her hair, in her head? And that’s when my father referred to as her ‘Littlefeather’? That’s one other fantasy,” Ms. Orlandi defined to the Chronicle.
Littlefeather claimed to have obtained her title from Navajo activists throughout the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz.
LaNada Warjack, a then-student activist who was on Alcatraz throughout your entire 18-month occupation, stated Littlefeather was not there and that activists solely realized who she was throughout her Oscar speech.
“We by no means actually knew her till Oscar night time. … That very same 12 months she did a diffusion in Playboy journal. We knew no Native would do this. … The very last thing we as Native girls needed anybody to consider us was as intercourse objects,” Ms. Warjack instructed the Chronicle.
The sisters stated they’d withheld the reality till now as a result of they thought Littlefeather’s fame would fade away.
In gentle of the constructive protection Littlefeather obtained after her loss of life, in addition to the official apology from the Movement Image Academy she obtained earlier in 2022 for the backlash to her 1973 speech, her sisters stated it troubled them to see her “being commemorated as a saint.”
