Sacheen Littlefeather was NOT a Native American, her birth sisters say her father was Mexican
Native American actress and activist Sacheen Littlefeather, who died earlier this month aged 75, has been exposed as an ethnic fraud by her two Hispanic sisters.
The model-turned-activist shot to instant fame in 1973 when she took the stage in place of Marlon Brando at the Academy Awards. The actor, who won the Best Actor statue for his role in The Godfather, allowed Littlefeather to speak on his behalf about how Native Americans were treated in Hollywood.
Claiming to be a descendant of the Apache nation, Littlefeather spoke about the plight of Native Americans in Hollywood. Audiences booed her and she faced racist backlash for years.
Nearly 50 years after that moment on stage, Sacheen received a letter of apology from The Academy and agreed to appear at an in-person event in mid-September to formally accept the apology.
The only problem with Littlefeather’s previously undisputed life story was that, according to her siblings, not an ounce of it was true.
In a recent interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Littlefeather’s two biological sisters — Rosalind Cruz and Trudy Orlandi — pull back the curtain on their siblings’ cheating spanning half a century.
In March 1973, Sacheen Littlefeather, posing as a Native American, gave a speech in place of Marlon Brando, who accepted his Best Actor award, about how “her people” were treated in Hollywood
Littlefeather turned down the Best Actor Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando, who won for his role in The Godfather. She carries with her a letter from Brando stating that he declined the award in protest of America’s treatment of Native Americans — if only he had chosen a real Native American to represent him
Littlefeather posed with the letter written by Brando. She claimed to be a member of the White Mountain Apache tribe
“It’s a lie,” Orlandi told the outlet. “My father was who he was. His family came from Mexico. And my father was born in Oxnard.”
Cruz agreed, “It’s a scam.
“It’s disgusting to the heritage of tribal peoples. And it’s just… an insult to my parents.”
Orlandi speculated that at the time Littlefeather entered the entertainment world, she decided “it was more respectable to be Native American than Hispanic” — her true ethnicity.
Shortly before her death, Littlefeather also spoke to the Chronicle about her famous Oscar speech:
“I spoke my heart, not for myself, as an Indian woman, but for us and us, for all Indians… I had to tell the truth. Whether it was accepted or not, it had to be spoken on behalf of the indigenous people,” she said.
In reality, Littlefeather was born in Salinas, California under the name Maria Louise Cruz.
Her parents were Manuel Ybarra Cruz and Gertrude Barnitz.
A review of her father’s genealogy found no evidence that his extended family had any connection with Native American nations in the United States.
The Chronicle story’s author — Jacqueline Keener, herself a Diné/Dakota Indian — has taken a pastime of compiling a list of purported “Pretendians,” a term coined to denote non-Indians who pretend to be to do for personal gain.
Keener wrote that Littlefeather’s lifelong lie about being a White Mountain Apache Indian began after she was a student at San Jose State in the late 1960s.
She then began a career as a model.
She was identified as Sacheen Littlefeather in a January 14, 1971 picture in the Oakland Trive.
Before her death earlier this month, Littlefeather officially accepted an Academy Awards apology letter, nearly 50 years after her first speech
After her death, Sacheen’s two biological sisters came forward to speak out about her lifelong lie that she was a Native American woman. In reality, her family was from Mexico
Jacqueline Keener, herself a Diné/Dakota Indian, has made a pastime of compiling a list of alleged “Pretendians,” a term coined to denote non-Indians purporting to do it for personal gain
She has claimed on several occasions throughout her life that she was raised by a white mother and local father in a cottage in Salinas without even an indoor toilet.
Her father, she said, was a violent Apache alcoholic who terrorized the family.
Cruz tells a very different story: “My father was deaf and lost his hearing to meningitis when he was 9 years old.
“He was born into poverty. His father, George Cruz, was an alcoholic who was violent and used to hit him. And he was passed on to foster families and foster families. But my sister stuff took what happened to him.’
Orlandi said her father never drank.
“My father never smoked. And you know, she beat him up too and said my father was mentally ill. My father wasn’t mentally ill.”
She added that the family does indeed have a toilet.
Littlefeather spent most of her life lying about her family and background, as well as speaking on behalf of a people to which she was not entitled.
In 1972, Hugh Hefner had commissioned footage of Littlefeather and nine other local women riding naked in the wild.
Ultimately, Hefner turned down the footage because it wasn’t “erotic enough.”
Littlefeather told a columnist at the time that she originally agreed to do the shoot because “everyone says black is beautiful – we wanted to show that red is beautiful, too.”
After her moment at the Oscars a few months later, Sacheen said she was blacklisted by the entertainment industry for her activism.
The sisters claim that their goal in coming forward after their sister’s death is to restore the truth about their parents, who described them as good, hardworking people.
Orlandi told Keener that “Sacheen didn’t like her. She didn’t like being Mexican.” So it made sense to Littlefeather that she spent most of her life “playing with someone else”.
“The best way I could sum up my sister is that she created a fantasy. She lived in a fantasy and she died in a fantasy,” she said.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11344055/Sacheen-Littlefeather-NOT-Native-American-biological-sisters-say-father-Mexican.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490 Sacheen Littlefeather was NOT a Native American, her birth sisters say her father was Mexican
