Sacheen Littlefeather to receive apology from AMPAS

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Bob Jersey

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Aug 16, 2022, 11:05:13 AM8/16/22
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The Native American woman, now 75, who famously gave a rejection speech in Marlon Brando's behalf for his 1973 Best Actor Oscar for The Godfather, will be honoured in September at the Academy Museum, an event that will also feature dancing/musical performances and remarks from Academy officials and another Native, area California Assemblyman James Ramos (San Bernardino area)... a free, by-reservation livestream has apparently been booked solid...

Tom Wolper

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Aug 16, 2022, 2:29:33 PM8/16/22
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I was really touched by this story. I didn’t watch the Oscars that night but I remember friends and classmates sneering at her and I don’t remember any introspection or contrition since then. Too often the public atonement comes only after the target has died. It surprises me in a good way that the Academy stepped up without a public shaming campaign and they can tell Littlefeather that the institution was wrong while she is still alive.

On Tue, Aug 16, 2022 at 11:05 AM 'Bob Jersey' via TVorNotTV <tvor...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
The Native American woman, now 75, who famously gave a rejection speech in Marlon Brando's behalf for his 1973 Best Actor Oscar for The Godfather, will be honoured in September at the Academy Museum, an event that will also feature dancing/musical performances and remarks from Academy officials and another Native, area California Assemblyman James Ramos (San Bernardino area)... a free, by-reservation livestream has apparently been booked solid...


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PGage

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Aug 16, 2022, 3:03:26 PM8/16/22
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I did watch that night, and my parents were the type that were all in for her from the start; my parents were indirectly involved in a group supporting the Wounded Knee protest (it was probably my mothers favorite Oscar moment of all time). 

I think there has been some Public shaming, growing on Twitter since the Will Smith incident, as the story about Wayne Having to be restrained from physically attacking her got traction.

Still, I agree it was a good idea to do this while she is still alive to appreciate it.

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Tom Wolper

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Aug 20, 2022, 10:05:51 AM8/20/22
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Film historian Farrah Smith Nehme did a deep dive into footage from that Oscar night and subsequent interviews to see if the incident with Wayne really happened, and if not, where the story came from.

Her conclusion: Wayne was post-surgery for lung cancer and was less than physically robust. Since Littlefeather was on stage for less than two minutes and she hadn’t submitted her speech in advance, Wayne wouldn’t have had enough time to get to the stage from his seat. It’s possible he was already backstage and expressed anger, but that would have been at Brando for dissing the Academy and the ceremony.

The story of the six security men restraining him seems to come from interviews after Wayne’s death and was an embellishment of what happened that night.

PGage

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Aug 20, 2022, 3:07:43 PM8/20/22
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This is roughly consistent with my understanding, both of what actually happened that night, and that the Will Smith assault brought the whole story up again in force on Twitter.

Late on Oscar night I was involved in a brief flame war on my Twitter feed when I tried to gently modify unqualified assertions about John Wayne having to be restrained from beating the shit out of Littlefeather. I was pretty sure that never happened, as my parents knew people who were part of the Wounded Knee event and were in touch with Littlefeather in the days and weeks after that Oscar show, and while there were lots of stories about the racist Academy members, there were none about almost being beat up by John Wayne (we all hated Wayne in those days, and would have been a very receptive audience). Still, on Oscar night 2022 Twitter was full of overconfident claims that the focus on Chris Rock was an example of a misogynistic re-writing of history, since Littlefeather had almost been killed by the Duke and nobody ever talks about it.

I agree with Nehme’s reconstruction of what likely happened, though not with the gentle implication that Littlefeather was lying. My guess is that at some point after the fact somebody told her something like “Wayne was super pissed, and sounded like he wanted to beat the shit out of you.” Put that together with how scary and intimidating it would have been for her in that situation, not to mention how tense things were at Wounded Knee, (where as I recall 2 or 3 tribal members were murdered) and it is easy to see how, in her mind, as she is rushed off stage and into the elevator somewhere an out of control John Wayne, living (barely) symbol of Indian Killers everywhere, was somewhere near by straining at restraints to get at her.

Kevin M.

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Aug 20, 2022, 4:03:37 PM8/20/22
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On Sat, Aug 20, 2022 at 12:07 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:
This is roughly consistent with my understanding, both of what actually happened that night, and that the Will Smith assault brought the whole story up again in force on Twitter.

Late on Oscar night I was involved in a brief flame war on my Twitter feed when I tried to gently modify unqualified assertions about John Wayne having to be restrained from beating the shit out of Littlefeather. I was pretty sure that never happened, as my parents knew people who were part of the Wounded Knee event and were in touch with Littlefeather in the days and weeks after that Oscar show, and while there were lots of stories about the racist Academy members, there were none about almost being beat up by John Wayne (we all hated Wayne in those days, and would have been a very receptive audience). Still, on Oscar night 2022 Twitter was full of overconfident claims that the focus on Chris Rock was an example of a misogynistic re-writing of history, since Littlefeather had almost been killed by the Duke and nobody ever talks about it.

I agree with Nehme’s reconstruction of what likely happened, though not with the gentle implication that Littlefeather was lying. My guess is that at some point after the fact somebody told her something like “Wayne was super pissed, and sounded like he wanted to beat the shit out of you.” Put that together with how scary and intimidating it would have been for her in that situation, not to mention how tense things were at Wounded Knee, (where as I recall 2 or 3 tribal members were murdered) and it is easy to see how, in her mind, as she is rushed off stage and into the elevator somewhere an out of control John Wayne, living (barely) symbol of Indian Killers everywhere, was somewhere near by straining at restraints to get at her.

I am constantly reminded of Bob Newhart’s one-liner about The Duke, as he sarcastically quipped “Do you ever think about  how close we came to losing WWII had it not been for John Wayne?” Wayne evoked an image, literally and figuratively larger than life, of the archetypal hero, but he was mostly bluster, and by most accounts of him as a private man, politics largely bored him. He’d talk politics publicly and on set because he disliked discussing his personal life with people he wasn’t close to. It’s also ironic that although Clint Eastwood played the typically more progressive anti-hero in most of his westerns, he was (and continues to be) much more conservative than Wayne on his worst days. Wayne’s openly pro-union views would get him a “woke” label by the current GOP. I will not defend Wayne’s racist views, they aren’t defensible, but I also don’t believe those views factor into the minds of too many people who watch his movies today. He’s an easy “hero” to deconstruct, but not many people think he’s worth taking the time to deconstruct.

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David Bruggeman

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Aug 20, 2022, 5:42:16 PM8/20/22
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This in turn, reminds me of a photo of the Duke wearing tight shorts and espadrilles that Scottish Conan Guy used on his show once or twice.  While I can't find video, the photo in question is in this article (scroll down some) - https://www.primermagazine.com/2017/spend/espadrilles-men-summer-shoes

David

PGage

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Aug 20, 2022, 6:00:43 PM8/20/22
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Eastwood is smarter and more politically involved, but even counting his loopy Convention speech I don’t think on his worst day he has ever been as toxic and hateful in his views as Wayne was. If people today don’t think he is worth taking apart, all the better if it means he has been forgotten. For those of us who grew up in his seemingly ever present shadow, the trauma is real.

Kevin M.

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Aug 20, 2022, 6:41:21 PM8/20/22
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On Sat, Aug 20, 2022 at 3:00 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:
Eastwood is smarter and more politically involved, but even counting his loopy Convention speech I don’t think on his worst day he has ever been as toxic and hateful in his views as Wayne was. If people today don’t think he is worth taking apart, all the better if it means he has been forgotten. For those of us who grew up in his seemingly ever present shadow, the trauma is real.

I won’t discount your trauma, as I’m sure it is genuine. And I concede I’ve always had a preference of Wayne over Eastwood. But Eastwood literally entered the political arena both as an active politician and as a part of the anti-Obama cult (which would reform as the Trump cult). The moment with the chair was iconic and probably his most notorious political stunt unless you lived in Carmel during his tenure. Wayne gave his notorious Playboy interview where he poorly expressed what was then a standard talking point about the level of education of black men in America… it was horrible and indefensible, and it was a commonly held belief by white conservatives at that time. The fact Eastwood continued to push a racist political agenda for several decades following the death of Wayne… and for several decades after many conservatives tried to distance itself from those views… to me that is what makes Eastwood worse. Perhaps had Wayne lived he’d have continued down that road and been worse than Eastwood, but Eastwood perpetuated it for another forty years. 


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Kevin M. (RPCV)

Kevin M.

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Oct 3, 2022, 1:19:01 AM10/3/22
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RIP Ms Littlefeather 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

PGage

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Oct 22, 2022, 10:33:22 AM10/22/22
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And now comes this explosive piece from Jacqueline Keeler in the SF Chronic, a Diné/Dakota writer living in Portland who has an ongoing project of identifying what she calls “Pretendians” - non-Native people who falsely claim Indian identity.

Keeler reports a convincing case that the claim of the woman who called herself “Sacheen Littlefeather” to be White Mountain Apache (or a member of any Indian tribe) through her father was bullshit.

Littlefeather was born Maria Louise Cruz in 1946. Her parents were Manuel Ybarra Cruz and Gertrude Barnitz. Keeler writes “My review of her father’s side of the family tree, where she claimed her Native heritage, found no documented ties between his extended family and any extant Native American nations in the United States.”

Keeler interviewed Littlefeather’s two sisters, who insist both of their parents were Mexican Americans, the father was not (as Littlefeather claimed) an alcoholic or abusive, and that their sister Maria never talked about being Indian until college aged and she wanted to get into modeling and acting. Keeler also researched the background of Littlefeather’s grandparents in Mexico and found no evidence of any formal Indian heritage. Keeler concludes that she was no more Indian than any random Mexican who is likely to have more or less incidental traces of Indian ancestry, but nothing that would constitute tribal identity.

This rocks a small but important part of my world, as the Littlefeather episode was a part of my family story, and my parents were in touch with and offered support of different kinds (including financial) to her through intermediaries. I suppose now I should think of my parents as having been defrauded, though they were the type that would rather help someone who was lying than not help someone who needed it, and would never have thought of making a big deal about it.

I do owe an apology to Nehme, the author of the piece linked to in the original thread, as I had chided her for implying that Littlefeather was the source if the lie that John Wayne had wanted to assault her at the Oscars. If Keeler is right Littlefeather told more and bigger lies than that.

Kevin M.

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Oct 22, 2022, 12:36:48 PM10/22/22
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Hold the proverbial phone… are they trying to tell me that people in Hollywood aren’t always who they say they are? 

Setting aside my sarcasm, what I see as the biggest failing in modern politics is the emphasis of individual people over the message itself. Republicans used to be more guilty of that than Democrats, but Democrats have caught up in recent years. 

JFK was an egotistical, womanizing, self-centered a-hole, but we still honor the achievements of his time in office because his presidency was never about him but about the ideas he moved forward. By contrast, Nixon became THE GOP, so when he fell from grace, everything about his administration became scorched earth. Trump is Nixon reincarnated for the modern age. It remains to be seen if Democrats will try to deify Biden; they ought not, but it sure looks like they want to.

Brando was openly liberal at a time when the establishment frowned upon it. He knew he could shine a light on the injustices against Native Americans, but he also knew he couldn’t possibly be the face of such a message. He chose someone he thought would be better; he was right… it is a moment still talked about decades later. There was no way to verify anyone’s claim of Native American blood in that era; for all we know, Littlefeather (like Elizabeth Warren) was told something about her heritage and she believed it, and it led her to crusade for Native American people. Or she knew she wasn’t Native American, but crusaded for them anyway. 

We always, always, always deconstruct the messengers. And we do so at the cost of the message. Making one woman the focus takes away from the issue itself. There was never going to be a perfect person to stand up on that stage to say what she said; there has only been one perfect person in history, and He was nailed to a tree and crucified for telling people how awesome it would be if everybody was nice to one another. And after they nailed him to a tree, they deconstructed Him, too, because we simply won’t tolerate anyone telling us to be nice. Littlefeather can still be commended for what she said, despite her imperfections. And we can all be nicer to each other. 

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PGage

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Oct 22, 2022, 3:34:21 PM10/22/22
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I don’t disagree with most of that, but for the author of the piece, and Littlefeather’s sisters, the issues are different, and not at all about Littlefeather and Brandi’s Iscar message: 1) Indian identity is tied in with lots of specific, tangible things, like access to Tribal assets and rights. Keeler is part of a group trying to crack down on non Indians trying to cash in on that (there are similar projects for Native Hawaiians, and Inuits); 2) The sisters feel that Littlefeather took a big dump on both their father (she represented him as an abusive alcoholic, when he was neither) and their Mexican heritage, which they are proud of, but Littlefeather ran away from because she felt it would not help with her career.

Tom Wolper

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Oct 22, 2022, 3:35:01 PM10/22/22
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Changing identities is a common and fundamental attribute of Americans going back to the Colonial Era. Usually it takes the form of passing, when someone from a marginalized group takes on the identity of a member of a privileged group. When someone takes on the identity of a member of a marginalized group, that bears a deeper examination (Rachel Dolezal, for example).

Identity in a Native tribe can be difficult to establish in some cases because of intermarriage, forced relocation to boarding schools, or other dispersion. Native children of a passing parent may also not be brought up knowing their tribal identity. The White Mountain Apache had no record of Littlefeather being a tribal member, yet they had 50 years to disavow her and never did. And she spent the rest of her life after the Oscar ceremony devoted to Native causes.

To say Sacheen Littlefeather was a fraud is to accuse her of lying to gain some advantage. The people she supposedly defrauded, the White Mountain Apache, don’t acknowledge any damage caused by her, and she didn’t make any money off of her deception. There was dishonesty but she wasn’t a grifter.

PGage

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Oct 22, 2022, 3:38:42 PM10/22/22
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Well, as I said, technically she did solicit and receive money at the time from people who tended support causes like hers, based in part on her supposed Indian identity. I think that probably is fraud, though as I say my parents would not have really thought about it like that or worried about it much.

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