Fauxahontas 2.0
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Sacheen Littlefeather was a Native American icon. Her sisters say she was an ethnic fraud
In 1973, actress and activist Sacheen Littlefeather took the stage at the Oscars dressed in a beaded buckskin dress in place of Marlon Brando, after he was awarded Best Actor for his role as Vito Corleone in “The Godfather.” Claiming Apache heritage, she spoke eloquently, to a backdrop of boos, of the mistreatment of Native Americans by the film industry and beyond.
The blowback was swift and brutal.
Presenters ridiculed her during the broadcast. She told reporters that John Wayne had to be held back by six security guards to prevent him from rushing the stage and assaulting her. In taped interviews this year with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences shortly before her death, Littlefeather said that going onstage that night led to her being blacklisted from the entertainment business.
But Littlefeather didn’t tell the truth that night. That’s because, according to her biological sisters, Rosalind Cruz and Trudy Orlandi, Littlefeather isn’t Native at all.
“It’s a lie,” Orlandi told me in an exclusive interview. “My father was who he was. His family came from Mexico. And my dad was born in Oxnard.”
“It is a fraud,” Cruz agreed. “It’s disgusting to the heritage of the tribal people. And it’s just … insulting to my parents.”
Littlefeather’s sisters both said in separate interviews that they have no known Native American/American Indian ancestry. They identified as “Spanish” on their father’s side and insisted their family had no claims to a tribal identity.
“I mean, you’re not gonna be a Mexican American princess,” Orlandi said of her sister’s adoption of a fraudulent identity. “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.”
The sisters reached out to tell me their story because, for some time, I have been compiling a public list of alleged “Pretendians” — non-Native people who I or other Native American people suspect or proved to have manufactured their Native identities for personal gain. Littlefeather was among them.
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Apparently this has been publicly known for decades. Roger Ebert mentioned it in a blog post in 2004, when writing about Brando. Who knows who told him or how long it's been common knowledge.
John Wayne had to be physically restrained? I call BS.
In the first place, what... he would have gone on stage and slapped her? And in the second place, there is only one man that could physically restrain The Duke, and he (probably) wasn't there.
Maybe I'm wrong. The headline just might have read, "John Wayne Punches Squaw in Nose, Academy Members Cheer!" -
John Wayne had to be physically restrained? I call BS.
In the first place, what... he would have gone on stage and slapped her? And in the second place, there is only one man that could physically restrain The Duke, and he (probably) wasn't there.
Maybe I'm wrong. The headline just might have read, "John Wayne Punches Squaw in Nose, Academy Members Cheer!"@Rainman said in Fauxahontas 2.0:
John Wayne had to be physically restrained?
Her conclusion, after considerable reporting and research, is: “Never happened.” Rather, she says, the story began as an exaggerated yarn that Oscar telecast director Marty Pasetta started telling interviewers a year or so after the fact “that got more exciting each time it was told” until it became “a persistent urban legend.”
