Sacheen Littlefeather, the actress and activist who declined Marlon Brando’s 1973 Academy Award for The Godfather on his behalf in an indelible protest of Hollywood’s portrayal of Native Individuals, has died. She was 75.
Littlefeather’s niece, Calina Lawrence, confirmed that she died peacefully on Sunday, surrounded by family members at her Marin County, California, dwelling. The trigger was breast most cancers, the household stated.
Littlefeather’s look on the 1973 Oscars would develop into one of many award present’s most well-known moments. Clad in buckskin costume and moccasins, Littlefeather took the stage when presenter Roger Moore learn Brando’s identify because the winner for finest actor.
Talking to the viewers, Littlefeather cited Native American stereotypes in movie and the then-ongoing weekslong protest at Wounded Knee in South Dakota as the rationale for Brando’s absence.
She stated Brando had written “a really lengthy speech” however she was restricted by time to transient remarks. Producer Howard Koch had allegedly warned Littlefeather, then 26, that he would have her arrested if she spoke for greater than a minute.
“I urge at the moment that I’ve not intruded upon this night and that we are going to sooner or later, our hearts and our understandings will meet with love and generosity,” Littlefeather stated, turning into the primary Native American lady to look onstage on the Oscars.
Though transient, simple and courteous, Littlefeather’s look was contentious, receiving a mixture of applause and boos from the viewers. Within the years after, she endured appreciable scorn and abuse for her speech, she stated.
“I spoke from my coronary heart,” she advised The Related Press days after the Oscars.
“These phrases had been written in blood, maybe my very own blood. I felt about like Christ carrying the load of the cross on his shoulders.”
Solely just lately did the Academy of Movement Photos Arts and Sciences formally tackle the remedy Littlefeather obtained following her look.
In August, the movie academy apologised to her. Two weeks in the past, it held a night of “dialog, therapeutic and celebration” in her honour.
“The abuse you endured due to this assertion was unwarranted and unjustified,” the academy’s president, David Rubin, wrote in a letter to Littlefeather.
“The emotional burden you could have lived by means of and the associated fee to your individual profession in our trade are irreparable. For too lengthy the braveness you confirmed has been unacknowledged. For this, we provide each our deepest apologies and our honest admiration.”
Littlefeather responded in a press release: “We Indians are very affected person folks — it is solely been 50 years!”
“We have to hold our sense of humour about this always,” she added. “It is our technique of survival.”
Littlefeather met Brando by means of her neighbour, Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola. She had recognized Brando for a few 12 months earlier than he referred to as her the evening earlier than the 1973 ceremony, invited her to his home and requested her to attend in his place.
Political speeches on the Oscars had been then nonetheless a rarity, and a few in attendance noticed the transient tackle as a break in decorum — and one which raised a topic not everybody was keen to contemplate.
Following the Oscars, her credentials as an actress and activist — Littlefeather had posed later in 1973 for Playboy, which she defended as proof that “purple was stunning” — had been questioned in tabloid experiences and elsewhere. Her alternatives as an actress dried up.
Littlefeather stated she was “red-listed” from the trade. She fell out of present enterprise and, within the many years after, labored primarily as an activist for Native Individuals.
On the academy occasion final month, Littlefeather, in a wheelchair, stated regardless of all of the hardship she confronted after the Oscars, she would do all of it once more.
“I used to be representing all Indigenous voices on the market, as a result of we had by no means been heard in that manner earlier than,” she stated.
“And if I needed to pay the value of admission, then that was OK, as a result of these doorways needed to be opened — like Yosemite Sam. Anyone needed to do it.”