Sacheen Littlefeather Dead: Actress Who Delivered Brando Oscar Speech Was 75

The Academy formally apologized to the Native American activist and former actress in June after she was blacklisted for representing the actor at the 1973 Academy Awards.

Sacheen Littlefeather (Apache/Yaqui/Ariz.), the Native American actress and activist who took to the stage at the 1973 Academy Awards to reveal that Marlon Brando would not accept his Oscar for The Godfather, has died.

Brando had decided to boycott the March 1973 Oscars in protest of how Native Americans were portrayed onscreen as well as to pay tribute to the ongoing occupation at Wounded Knee, in which 200 members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) faced off against thousands of U.S.

Speaking in measured tones but off-the-cuff — Brando, who told her not to touch the trophy, had given her a typed eight-page speech, but telecast producer Howard Koch informed her she had no more than 60 seconds — she continued, “And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry … and on television in movie reruns, and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee.”.

Some media outlets questioned her Native heritage (her father was Apache and Yaqui and her mother was white) and claimed she rented her costume for the ceremony, while conservative celebrities including John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and Charlton Heston — three actors who had starred in many a Western — reportedly criticized Brando and Littlefeather’s actions.

I never thought I’d live to see the day I would be hearing this, experiencing this,” Littlefeather told The Hollywood Reporter. “When I was at the podium in 1973, I stood there alone.”.

When she mentioned to Brando that she didn’t have an evening dress for the Oscars, “Marlon told me to wear my buckskin,” she said in the 2018 documentary Sacheen: Breaking the Silence.

Although Brando’s stunt had the intended effect of renewing attention on Wounded Knee, Littlefeather said it put her life at risk and killed her acting career, claiming that she lost guild memberships and was banned from the industry.

(In addition, the Academy subsequently prohibited winners from sending proxies to accept — or reject — awards on their behalf.).

“I was blacklisted — or, you could say, ‘redlisted,'” Littlefeather said in her documentary.

Littlefeather also continued her involvement in the arts, co-founding the nonprofit National American Indian Performing Arts Registry in the early ’80s, advising on multiple PBS programs and continuing to be an advocate for Native American inclusion in Hollywood (she appeared in the 2009 documentary Reel Injun).

“I was the first woman of color to ever make a political statement in the history of the Academy Awards,” Littlefeather said in Sacheen, and at the time, Coretta Scott King and Cesar Chavez were among the few who publicly praised her Oscar speech.

But over the decades, her onstage advocacy proved to be a precursor for the conversation about diversity in Hollywood that continues today, and Jada Pinkett Smith cited her as an inspiration for her own boycott of the 2016 Academy Awards (the #OscarsSoWhite ceremony).

Upon receiving the Academy’s apology, Littlefeather said of her late husband, “His spirit is still here with me, and I know that what he wanted for me was always justice and reconciliation.” And two weeks before her death, when she took to an Academy stage for the second time in her life, at the museum’s celebration in her honor, she knew her own passing was imminent: “I’m crossing over soon to the spirit world

Littlefeather requested that donations be made to the American Indian Child Resource Center of Oakland