Sacheen Littlefeather Lied About Native American Ancestry, Sisters Claim - Rolling Stone

Just weeks after the death of Sacheen Littlefeather — the histrion and activistic who declined Marlon Brando’s 1973 Oscar triumph for The Godfather on his behalf and was blacklisted successful Hollywood — her biologic sisters person revealed that she fabricated her Native American ancestry.

The 2 sisters of Littlefeather (born Marie Louise Cruz) told the San Francisco Chronicle that, contempt Littlefeather’s claims of being White Mountain Apache, their begetter was really Mexican with nary tribal identity; genealogical records besides traced the Cruz household past to Mexico City with nary known ties to the tribal nations there.

“It’s a lie,” Littlefeather’s sister Trudy Orlandi told writer Jacqueline Keeler. “My begetter was who helium was. His household came from Mexico. And my dada was calved successful Oxnard.”

Sister Rosalind Cruz added, “It is simply a fraud. It’s disgusting to the practice of the tribal people. And it’s conscionable … insulting to my parents.”

Part of the sisters’ determination to travel guardant with Littlefeather’s fraudulence was to rightfully grant their father, who Littlefeather painted arsenic an abusive drunk successful interviews, arsenic good arsenic embellished the family’s poorness increasing up; the sisters said it was successful information their father’s begetter who was drunk and abusive, and Littlefeather took their father’s harsh puerility and applied it to her ain root story.

“My dada ne'er drank. My dada ne'er smoked. And you know, she besides blasted him and said my begetter was mentally ill. My begetter was not mentally ill,” Orlandi said. 

Additionally, the sisters speculate that their sister’s adopted sanction of Sacheen is apt a notation to the Sasheen ribbons they played with arsenic children; it’s besides improbable “Littlefeather” was ever officially bestowed connected her by the Navajo arsenic she claimed.

(Cruz and Orlandi besides cleared the aerial astir their sister’s fabricated backstory this week during Littlefeather’s ceremonial service, wherever they besides defended their father’s legacy.)

In obituaries for Littlefeather that followed her Oct. 2 death, galore noted her information successful the Native concern to effort to reclaim Alcatraz Island successful 1969. However, LaNada Warjack, 1 of the pupil leaders for the duration of the 18-month occupation, told the San Francisco Chronicle that Littlefeather was ne'er portion of the protest. “We ne'er truly knew her until the Oscar night,” Warjack said.

After astir a half-century of Littlefeather being “blacklisted” from Hollywood owed to her Oscar code successful 1973, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences formally apologized to her successful June 2022 and held an event in her grant successful Sept. conscionable days earlier her death.

“Be arrogant that we basal arsenic survivors — each of us,” Littlefeather said during the Academy event. “Please, erstwhile I americium gone, ever beryllium reminded that whenever you basal for your truth, you volition beryllium keeping your voice, and the voices of our Nations and our radical alive.”