Sacheen Littlefeather (1946- ), a Native American activist and actress, is best known for refusing an Academy Award on behalf of Marlon Brando in 1973. He had won Best Actor for playing Don Corleone in “The Godfather” (1972), his most famous role. Brando thought it better to go to the stand-off at Wounded Knee between AIM and the FBI than to go to the Oscars.
She came up on stage dressed in her Northern Traditional powwow dance outfit, refused the Oscar and then said in part:
“He very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award. And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry (boos, applause) and on television in movie reruns and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee.”
Russel Means, who was at Wounded Knee at the time, said of that moment:
“We don’t believe we’re going to get out of there alive and the morale is down low, and Marlon Brando and Sacheen Littlefeather totally uplifted our lives.”
As it turns out, she was winging it: Brando had given her a speech to read, but the producer threatened to arrest her if she went over 60 seconds. She did read the speech later to the press. The New York Times printed it in full. It said in part:
“the motion picture community has been as responsible as any for degrading the Indian and making a mockery of his character, describing his as savage, hostile and evil. It’s hard enough for children to grow up in this world. When Indian children watch television, and they watch films, and when they see their race depicted as they are in films, their minds become injured in ways we can never know.”
She said that afterwards the FBI leaned on Hollywood to blacklist her.
In 1972, the year before the Oscars, in what she now admits was a “dumb” move, she posed for Playboy. It was for a spread called “Ten Little Indians”, featuring ten Native women. Playboy never ran it because of Wounded Knee, but they did use some of her pictures in their October 1973 issue (just as Cher’s song “Half-Breed” went to number one on the US pop charts).
She took part in the Occupation of Alcatraz, where she met John Trudell, Adam Fortunate Eagle and others. She became an activist. That is how Brando met her. Since the 1980s she has been a healer.
Some say she is a Fake Indian. She was mainly brought up by her mother’s Caucasian family and called herself Maria Cruz, her birth name, till she went to California State University at Hayward. There she hung out with Chicano students, but later explored her Native identity and took the name Sacheen Littlefeather. Her father was a full-blood Indian of mixed White Mountain Apache and Yaqui descent. She now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where she is a highly respected member of the Native American community.
– Abagond, 2016.
Sources: Indian Country Today Media Network (2012, 2014); “Racism in Indian Country” (2009) by Dean Chavers.
See also:
- YouTube: Oscars: Marlon Brando’s Oscar win for the “The Godfather” – watch the video
- Hollywood
- Fake Indians
- Wounded Knee stand-off
- Russell Means
- Oregon stand-off
- The Occupation of Alcatraz
- Playboy
- Cher
570
Interesting story.
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Marlon Brando said,
“The motion picture community has been as responsible as any for degrading the Indian and making a mockery of his character, describing his as savage, hostile and evil. It’s hard enough for children to grow up in this world. When Indian children watch television, and they watch films, and when they see their race depicted as they are in films, their minds become injured in ways we can never know.”
The same is true for Blacks, Asians everyone across the board. The movies Hollywood makes are stereotypes and the story lines revolve around the lives of white people with POC filling in as props.
The authenticity of Native American actors and that their attire as “in period” was much lauded in The Revenant but the movie was about white people and their need for redemtions, with very little actual character development within the story of Natives and their story. The media talked much about the “work” DeCaprio put into it without acknowledging the excellent acting of Natives whose participation made the movie worth watching.
Hollywood uses POC as living props culturally appropriating their look and history for the sole benifit a white audiance.
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Their have been plenty of films where Blacks played parts that extended beyond stereo types and into charaters. Do any of these actors or movies ever get nominated ? Rarely. White America wants to see white people up on that Oscar stage.
I believe young whites are far more open to color but what, we have to wait 30 years for the current academy awards blow hards to die off before their eligible to vote ? lol
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The battle scene in the beginning of the revenant was pretty intense.
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Is it true that native americans hated blacks as much as whites did? I know that had slaves and from what I read they treated the slave as bad if not worse then white slave owners. If this is true, why do they hate blacks because it is whites who mistreat them.
I always thought natives were our allies but not I am not so sure. What is it about us that illicit such hatred towards us from every single race? Is this because of white propaganda against us? I recently watched a movie where the dialogue went something like this, I’m recalling this from memory.
“the jews hate the muslims”
“the arabs hate the jews”
“and everybody hates the blacks”
That last line is what I have trouble understanding, why is the group with the least amount of power, the most hated? What have we done to contribute to that hatred? I’m just curious because as black, gay, old, agnostic female. I ticked all the boxes for hatred. I am everything that america hates (as does most of the world) and after 53 years I have to admit it does get to me sometimes. This isn’t about self hatred as I am content with my life but sometimes I do wonder why so much hatred towards the black race when more than likely it was the white race that has committed most of the atrocities to non-whites? I am just seeking to understand.
Thanks
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“Hollywood uses POC as living props culturally appropriating their look and history for the sole benifit a white audiance.”
@MJB.
It goes well beyond mere cultural appropriation!
Interesting how Hollywood works hand in hand with the government to MAINTAIN and ORCHESTRATE the status quo.
“She said that afterwards the FBI leaned on Hollywood to blacklist her.”
Between TV, Movies, and now the Internet, the world barely stands a chance against the invisible hands of the puppet master to manipulate control/condition/program the puppets to think and act only within the boundaries of their paradigms. …
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Is the FBI a tool to preserve white supremacy in the US at all costs?
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^^
http://inthesetimes.com/article/15949/how_the_fbi_conspired_to_destroy_the_black_panther_party
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It is amazing the great lengths that the government, and white corporate interests (eg, Hollywood, Las Vegas, etc.) and their lobby groups go to discredit and marginalize these voices.
Not to mention how much they also are intent to make sure it does not creep into the education system.
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@yavenay
Different groups ally on shared interests which evolve over time. It is not so much different from the US allying with China during WWII against Japan (and Japan allying with Germany), but the US allying with Japan nowadays to monitor the maritime advance of China into the East and South China seas.
Blacks and Native Americans do have shared interests re: racist marginalization (eg, treatment in Hollywood and misrepresentation in the education system), but other interests which may not be shared. How many blacks ally with Natives to obtain Federal recognition, recover reservation land, hunting and fishing rights, ancestral traditions and human remains? How many Natives ally with blacks re: reparations for slavery? It’s not an either / or thing.
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@ yavenay
@ jefe
It wasn’t an either/or thing historically, either. For example, African Americans are rightly proud of the Buffalo Soldiers, but those soldiers spent much of their time out West fighting Native Americans to take their land for the US government. (They were later deployed to the Philippines to do the same thing there against the indigenous Asians.)
Another modern example to add to Jefe’s: How many African Americans support the elimination of racist mascots like the Redskins, the Atlanta Braves, the Kansas City Chiefs, etc.? How many black athletes have refused to play on those teams? How many black fans boycott their games?
Some Native Americans did own black slaves, but others welcomed runaway slaves into their tribes and intermarried with them.
Because of relocation policies, many Native Americans now live out West in states and regions where the African American population is low. In most parts of the country, the two groups don’t have much chance to interact and get a lot of their information about each other from stereotypes in the white-controlled mass media.
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Marlon Brando said all of this yet literally didn’t take care of his Tahiti offspring and was pretty estranged to them according to google acknowledgements.
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@Villagewriter
It’s a mixed bag. J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI is long gone. There’s a new administration with a mixed bag of policies. You have to admit that the government hires minorities at percentages better than most of the private sectors. So that’s a mixed positive that comes with the good and bad.
The thing that you should really think about is, compared to other nations, the US of A, other than Canada give or take, probably has the least corrupt government as we speak now. Even my utopia Singapore has major issues under the table.
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@Solitaire,
Thank you for your additional examples of how blacks and Native Americans have joined forces and when they found themselves on opposite sides , as well as this:
I find it interesting when I see the question posed (usually from blacks) whether Native Americans are allies with blacks in the fight against white racism.
I cannot recall any instance when Native Americans asked if blacks are their allies in the fight against white racism (and I grew up in an area where triracial Native Americans were forced to survive surrounded by large white and black communities). I think that they realized long ago that they are pretty much on their own. They are lucky if they can ally with different tribes along shared interests.
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There is a movie called “Edge of America” directed by Chris Eyre (Cheyenne-Arapaho) about a black high school teacher and coach who takes a job at an isolated reservation where many of the Native people have never before even seen an African American in real life. Good exploration of the cultural differences and the misconceptions both sides hold about each other.
It is based on a true story, which is examined in the documentary “Rocks with Wings,” also worth watching.
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^ We don’t have too many of those kinds of stories, and we need to hear more of those stories that don’t just center around white people. As it is, most POC groups get their stereotypes about other groups from what whites taught them, and it may not always help them when they have to interact or collaborate with each other.
I don’t think that the government or white corporate interests want to promote that kind of thing, though.
Apart from this, we also need to see more stuff about how the economic, social and political interests of one group impact other groups, not just whites. For example, how would reparations for slavery and Jim Crow affect Native Americans? Much, if not most of the wealth that passed into white hands not only came from the free or cheap labour of blacks but also the seizing and redistribution of land seized from Native Americans.
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At the university where I currently live, the black students are going to a school on land stolen from natives by force and bloodshed, and the native students are going to a school where the oldest buildings were literally built by black slave labor.
The wrongs done to those two groups are so intertwined, it is almost impossible to separate the strands.
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I was thinking that it will be very difficult to talk about reparations for slavery and Jim Crow as a subject independent from reparations to Native Americans for broken treaties and land theft.
The Homestead Acts put Federal public land in the hands of whites. It was one of the ways that the North fought against the South regarding land policy, giving free white men the opportunity to own land, something difficult for them to do in the South.
Wikipedia says
Of course slaves were shut out of this program, and very few blacks had the opportunity to participate. Sharecroppers would not have the means to enjoy this. This is how many whites gained their wealth.
One of the main points regarding reparations and how whites had prevented blacks from gaining wealth relates to how they were prevented from owning land, and how much of it was given away to whites for almost free. This shut blacks out from gaining wealth for generations.
But, if I looked at it from an Asian viewpoint, I would think about how they were treated as permanent aliens, not allowed to become US citizens, and thus ineligible to own land. They were shut out of the program too.
But, if I were looking at it from the viewpoint of Native American, it would look like the thieves shared their loot with their kith and kin, and now another group is demanding that that loot be shared with them too. So, the demand to have some of that land granted to them is akin to asking the thieves to share some of the loot with them.
A compromise would first have to be made to renegotiate the treaties and return some of the land to Native Americans. Maybe then the Federal government should buy back some of the land they “gave” to whites and find ways to redistribute that to rectify the prior wrongs.
However, a key way to have the Federal government justify their broken treaties or recognizing their land rights is by not acknowledging that the Native Americans removed from that land, or the members of the nation that made that treaty even exist any more.
In any case, I see the Case for (slavery) reparations to be so intertwined with Native American reparations, that we cannot look at one without acknowledging the other. If we want to campaign for reparations (eg, for slavery), then the beneficiaries of those reparations should not be a recurrent party to block Federal / State recognition to Native American nations (and thus garnering some hope of rectifying the broken treaties, forced assimilation, etc.).
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As unlikely as it is that the US govenment will ever grant reparations for slavery, I believe that is far more likely than the government ever returning any native land.
Do you know about the Black Hills money?
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I don’t know the details, but I know the Lakota Sioux refused money as compensation for the land the US government took in broken land treaties and land theft. And if they even took money, how would that be distributed to the Sioux? The problem still has not been resolved today in the Obama administration.
I know the United Nations recommended returning some land back, but the US Federal Government so far has refused, even though they acknowledged that they broke the treaties (and lost their Supreme court case).
This case has the best chance to return some of the land back, but so far it just ain’t happening.
US called out for stealing ‘vast terrorities’ of native land, refuses to meet with UN investigators
(http://usuncut.com/resistance/us-called-out-for-stealing-vast-terrorities-of-land-from-native-americans/)
Even if reparations for slavery are more likely, it will be hard to address that when the federal government, already found guilty by the Supreme Court, is doing nothing to address that.
But, my original point was more about the questions people posed about whether Native Americans are / are not allies with Blacks to fight white racism. But then, I have to ask, are Blacks allies (or not) with Native Americans regarding all the crimes committed against them, even the ones that the US government point blank has been found guilty of? This goes beyond other forms of racism, such as stereotypical depiction in Hollywood or cultural appropriation of icons / other cultural expression.
And further to this point
In the regions of the USA where blacks and Native Americans do live side by side or in nearby communities (eg, the Chesapeake Bay region and the Deep South), there is little if any alliance between the respective interests.
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I read that it was possible Brando and Littlefeather might have been having an affair who knows but they got their point across. The way Native Americans were portrayed in films and in literature are very negative stereotypes. Just like they like seeing negative stereotypes of black people. Brando it seems to me was kind of an eccentric. I read why he didn’t attend the Oscar ceremony because he was standing in solidarity with the Native Americans. He was an activist and saw the mistreatment of Native American people. I know he was good friends with Michael Jackson and his children were very troubled and ended in some tragic results. Black folks don’t need to boycott the Oscars they just need to create in their own spaces and be independent from white people asking to be let in their spaces.
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@yavenay
Where did you read that Native Americans had black slaves and treated them worse than the whites did?
In a country like Kenya ( and perhaps elsewhere in Africa) the white settlers took over land that really belonged to the black African. But in the immediate aftermath of Kenya’s independence, these same people would claim a oneness with Africa and it’s native peoples, and pointed to the Indian community as the vile exploiters and racists. And this bullshit was/is believed.
In pre-Independence Kenya, non-whites, whether Indians or Africans, were not allowed in certain places ( bars, hotels, restaurants, for example), or were segregated in places like cinemas, stadiums,buses and so on. But all this did/does not stop the disinformation merchants.
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