Sacheen Littlefeather was giddy as she hung up the cellphone in her San Francisco condo in March of 1973. The caller was Marlon Brando, she advised her youthful sister, Trudy Orlandi, and he had requested Littlefeather to seem on his behalf on the Academy Awards the next evening, in case he received the perfect actor award for “The Godfather.”
At the time, Brando was a prime Hollywood supporter of the American Indian Movement and acquainted with Littlefeather by her neighbor, Francis Ford Coppola. And Brando had determined to forged the 26-year-old aspiring actress as his Oscars proxy to reject the award, denounce the destructive stereotyping of American Indians in leisure and convey consideration to the Wounded Knee Occupation protest in South Dakota.
Orlandi didn’t perceive Brando’s selection. To her, Sacheen was Marie Louise Cruz from Salinas, they usually had a Mexican American father and White mom. But the subsequent evening, Orlandi watched on dwell TV as Sacheen stoically ascended the Oscars stage in a buckskin costume and advised a worldwide viewers of 85 million that she was Apache.
“It was a moving presentation, but it was a pretend Sacheen,” stated Orlandi, who lives in Marin County now. “And White Mountain Apache? Where did that come from?”
To Orlandi, it was the start of Littlefeather’s almost half-century hoax.
Since Littlefeather’s loss of life in Novato on Oct. 2 at age 75, Orlandi, 72, and one other sister, Rosalind Cruz, 65, have ignited an uproar in Native American circles by alleging their estranged activist sister spent 50 years faking an identification as White Mountain Apache and Yaqui. They say their sister’s speech was the primary time anybody of their Salinas household had ever talked about being Native American.
“It was mortifying,” stated Cruz, of Lake County, Montana, of the Oscars look. “I thought, ‘Oh great, this is the lengths you will go to to get into acting.’”
The allegations emerged into public view in October when Native American journalist Jacqueline Keeler printed an investigation into the Mexican ancestry of Littlefeather’s California-born father, Manuel Cruz. Keeler is thought for her aggressive efforts to out alleged “Pretendians,” individuals who falsely declare to be Native American. Her analysis, which included information going again to 1850, uncovered no ties between the Cruz household of Mexico and the White Mountain Apache and Yaqui tribes.
None of Littlefeather’s family recognized as Native American, Keeler stated. The Pascua Yaqui tribe in Arizona advised this information group that Littlefeather wasn’t enrolled, whereas the White Mountain Apache hasn’t responded to media inquiries about her membership.
As the fiftieth anniversary of Littlefeather’s Oscars second approaches, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences continues to showcase Littlefeather as an icon of range in its glittery new museum in Los Angeles, the place she is featured in an exhibit about iconic moments within the award ceremony’s historical past.
Academy representatives have stated the group acknowledges “self-identification.” But it has inserted a disclaimer at first of a three-hour interview with Littlefeather, posted on its YouTube channel, that claims oral histories “should not be understood as statements of fact.” In that interview, Littlefeather claims she was raised in poverty by an abusive alcoholic father and that she was “abandoned” by her mother and father who have been too mentally in poor health to take care of her. Littlefeather’s sisters say these claims are false.
LIttlefeather’s longtime Bay Area good friend, Bridget Neconie, stated she and others by no means doubted Littlefeather was Apache or Yaqui. “She couldn’t have been more Native,” stated Neconie, an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Acoma of New Mexico and former UC Berkeley assistant director of undergraduate admissions. “Maybe she didn’t have the piece of paper to prove it, but there’s no doubt about who she was.”
Other students and activists say Littlefeather’s alleged fraud was “an open secret” for years, and that she obscured, embellished or fabricated biographical particulars. LaNada War Jack, one of many pupil organizers of the 19-month-long Native American occupation of Alcatraz that began in 1969, advised this information group: “We applauded her when she spoke at the Oscars” however “we knew she wasn’t Native.”
“It’s one of the biggest hoaxes — certainly the biggest hoax since Iron Eyes Cody,” stated Dina Gilio-Whitaker, a Cal State San Marcos lecturer of American Indian Studies who was commissioned at one level to ghostwrite Littlefeather’s memoir. Cody, a second-generation Italian American actor, has turn out to be notorious for falsely claiming to be Native American after taking part in the position in films, TV and the “Keep America Beautiful” public service advertisements within the early Seventies.
After Littlefeather’s sisters realized about her loss of life, they went public with their fraud allegations as a result of, they stated, their sister’s “lies” maligned their mother and father, Manuel and Geroldine Cruz. The reality, they are saying, is that their mother and father, self-employed makers of horse saddles, raised their three daughters in a loving middle-class residence. Geroldine Cruz was not a battered spouse or mentally in poor health, and their hearing-impaired father by no means touched alcohol or abused his kids. He died of most cancers when Sacheen was 19, Orlandi stated.
It was across the similar time Littlefeather reportedly suffered a breakdown. She spent a yr in Agnews Insane Asylum in Santa Clara and was recognized with schizoaffective dysfunction, which might embrace temper swings, hallucinations and delusions.
Helene Hagan, a historian, anthropologist and former longtime good friend, believes that Littlefeather’s Native American claims and “delusions” of being “a suffering, victimized woman” started round this time.
Some of Littlefeather’s claims about aiding Native American organizations could be verified. The San Francisco Ballet confirmed she labored as an advisor for the Emmy-winning 1984 telecast of Michael Smuin’s “Song for Dead Warriors,” and she or he served as a board member of the American Indian AIDS Institute.
Other claims seem to have been exaggerated or are merely false, together with that she labored with Mother Teresa on AIDS sufferers, that she participated within the Native American protest/occupation at Alcatraz and that John Wayne tried to assault her at her Oscars look.
Orlandi and Cruz simply need the reality to be recognized about their household.
“My mom was a very sweet, kind person,” Orlandi stated. “I never saw my sister being beaten by my dad. … She made this man out to be a monster. This guy cannot protect himself or his name or his reputation.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”