Sacheen Littlefeather lied to us in 1973. She has no Native American ancestry. It was the defining moment of that year's Oscars and went down in history as a monumental moment of activism. When it was announced that Brando had won the Best Actor award for his role in The Godfather, Littlefeather went up to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles and picked up the award on Brando's behalf. Brando had boycotted the ceremony, citing the negative portrayal of Native Americans.
After the death of the actress on Oct. 2, almost fifty years later, the lie that she was hiding has been revealed. Littlefeather made it all up. Her sisters told the San Francisco Chronicle that the whole story was a "fraud." Littlefeather was not raised by a father of White Mountain Apache and Yankee Indian ancestry. "It’s a lie. My father was who he was. His family came from Mexico. And my dad was born in Oxnard, [Calif.]," said one of her biological sisters, Trudy Orlandi, in an exclusive interview with the newspaper.
These statements were confirmed by her other sister, Rosalind Cruz, in a separate interview with the Chronicle. "It is a fraud. It’s disgusting to the heritage of the tribal people. And it’s just … insulting to my parents."
According to them, they have no indigenous ancestry. They identify themselves as "Spanish" and recognize that they have no right to assume a tribal identity. "You’re not gonna be a Mexican American princess. You’re gonna be an American Indian princess. It was more prestigious to be an American Indian than it was to be Hispanic in her mind," Orlandi explained in her interview with the San Francisco Chronicle.
The author of the report, Jacqueline Keeler, was skeptical from early on. She began her research in January 2021. She quickly discovered that Littlefeather was born in Salinas, Calif. and that her real name was Marie Louise Cruz. Her parents, Manuel Ybarra Cruz and Gertrude Barnitz, had no native roots. Littlefeather's father indeed has Mexican heritage, as Keeler recounts in the article, but there was no indication that her ancestry was Native American or American Indian.
The story is similar to that of Rachel Dolezal, the self-described "black or mixed race" activist who was president of an NAACP chapter but whose parents are Caucasian.
Neither an impoverished upbringing nor a violent father
Manuel Ybarra Cruz was not a violent father either, as Littlefeather once claimed. In fact, it was actually her father himself that suffered abuse, as her sisters revealed to the newspaper. "My father was deaf and he had lost his hearing at 9 years old through meningitis. He was born into poverty. His father, George Cruz, was an alcoholic who was violent and used to beat him. And he was passed to foster homes and family. But my sister Sacheen took what happened to him," explained Cruz.
Orlandi confirmed her sister's statement: "my father’s father, George, he was the alcoholic. My dad never drank. My dad never smoked. And you know, she also blasted him and said my father was mentally ill. My father was not mentally ill."
The list of lies continued to grow. Littlefeather stated in an interview with The Berkeley Gazette on Dec. 6, 1974 that, during her childhood, she lived in a hut without bathroom. When asked about this, her sister Trudy could not stand it any longer and responded harshly: "That infuriates me. Our house had a toilet … And it’s not a shack, OK, I have pictures of it. Of course, we had a toilet."
Littlefeather absent from Alcatraz protests
Littlefeather also lied about her presence at the Native American occupation protests to reclaim Alcatraz Island in 1969. The journalist from the San Francisco Chronicle contacted LaNada Warjack, one of the leaders of this movement, who acknowledged not having seen her during the 18 months she lived on the island. "We never really knew her until the Oscar night, we thought that was really cool," Warjack explained. The activist, however, soon became suspicious about the Littlefeather's origins: "That same year she did a spread in Playboy magazine. We knew no Native would do that. Especially during the 70s …The last thing we as Native women wanted anyone to think of us was as sex objects."
The origins of her indigenous name were also debunked by her sisters. In fact, they don't know where she got the name: "That she danced in front of my father and always wore a feather in her hair, in her head? And that’s when my father called her Littlefeather? That’s another fantasy." Littlefeather kept up these fantasies until the day she died, and, thanks to that, she maintained her fame fifty years later. However, her sisters were tired of Littlefeather being exalted "as a saint," so they decided to uncover the truth.
Sacheen Littlefeather, Native American civil rights activist who famously declined Marlon Brando's 1973 Best Actor Academy Award, dies at 75. pic.twitter.com/OlpsoItlCw
- The Academy (@TheAcademy) October 3, 2022
