Sacheen Littlefeather Remembered

She was well mannered. She was respectful. She gently waved away the proffered Academy Award statuette from actor Roger Moore and softly stated, “Hey. My identify is Sacheen Littlefeather. 

 

“I’m Apache and I’m President of the Nationwide Native American Affirmative Picture Committee. I’m representing Marlon Brando this night and he has requested me to inform you in a really lengthy speech which I can not share with you currently due to time, however I can be glad to share with the press afterwards, that he very regretfully can not settle for this very beneficiant award. And the explanations for this being are the therapy of American Indians right now by the movie business…”

Interrupted by jeers, hoots and scattered applause, Littlefeather, who handed away in October 22, quietly stated, “Excuse me” and continued. “…and on tv in film reruns and likewise with latest happenings at Wounded Knee. I urge right now that I’ve not intruded upon this night and that we are going to sooner or later, our hearts and our understandings will meet with love and generosity. Thanks on behalf of Marlon Brando.”

A half-century later a plea for equality and honest illustration of Native Individuals in movie and TV would hardly generate a ripple of disagreement, however Littlefeather, who died in October at 75, discovered her personal profession aspirations dashed and her motives questioned (a viral rumor was that she was not a Native American in any respect, however in reality a paid stripper from Mexico).

Inside minutes of her look, she grew to become the butt of jokes. Raquel Welch, presenting the award for finest actress, stated, “I hope she doesn’t have a trigger,” whereas Clint Eastwood, asserting finest image quipped, “I don’t know if I ought to current this award on behalf of all of the cowboys shot in all of the John Ford Westerns through the years.”

In 1990, Ms. Littlefeather spoke to Individuals Journal of that night in 1973—the place she additionally known as consideration to “latest happenings at Wounded Knee,” the place a dispute over corruption on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota led to a standoff with federal authorities. “I went up there considering I might make a distinction. I used to be very naive. I instructed folks about oppression. They stated, ‘You’re ruining our night.’”

Brando, who later stated, “They need to have had a minimum of the courtesy to take heed to her,” discovered two bulletholes in his entrance door that night time.

Littlefeather continued her work on behalf of Native American rights and lived to see her battle vindicated by the very business that had as soon as dismissed her. This previous June then-Academy President David Rubin despatched her a “assertion of reconciliation,” writing that the abuse and exclusion she had suffered through the years “was unwarranted and unjustified.”

Her quiet however daring minute earlier than an viewers of 85 million (Awards producer Howard W. Koch threatened her with arrest if she went over 60 seconds) resonated on the time with Native American activists who celebrated her as a hero for highlighting problems with race and exclusion that had lengthy been unconfronted or swept apart.

Native American filmmakers and producers, together with Chicken Runningwater, additionally noticed Ms. Littlefeather as instrumental in opening the door towards extra humanizing and correct depictions of Native American life in tv exhibits like Reservation Canine and movies equivalent to Prey.

“The second we’re having now,” Runningwater stated, “is one thing that she and our filmmaking neighborhood had at all times dreamed of fifty years in the past.”

In an interview with Selection, a month earlier than she handed, Littlefeather shared a glimpse of the spirituality that sustained her.

“After we die, we all know that our ancestors are coming to offer. We all know that we’re going to that spirit world from the place we got here. We take this as a warrior with delight and never defeat, wanting ahead to becoming a member of our ancestors who’re going to be there with us at our final breath and so they’re going to welcome us into that world on the opposite aspect and have an enormous celebration for us.”

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