Two days later Sacheen Littlefeather’s death, Her estranged sister is furiously scrolling Twitter.
She was furious, she said in an interview this week, at the praise for Littlefeather, the actress and activist who rose to fame when Marlon Brando sent her to the 1973 Academy Awards to turn down his best actor award and denounced Hollywood’s treatment of Native Americans.
“I’m reading what all these people are saying: ‘Oh, rest in peace and she is a saint, and she sacrificed herself,'” Sister Rozalind Cruz said. Cruz said the sisters had been estranged for about 13 years for various reasons, but at the time she still believed her family had Indian ancestry.
Then she saw tweets from writer Jacqueline Keeler, a citizen of the Navajo Nation, who sparked controversy with her attempt to expose what she called “pretenders.” Keeler is refuting Littlefeather’s claims that her father is the White Mountain Apache and Yaqui.
Cruz replied to Keeler on Twitter on October 4 that her grandmother is of “Yaqui and Hispanic” descent. Cruz himself tried to enroll in the White Mountain Apache Tribe. But over the next few weeks, Keeler showed Cruz a genealogical study that traced her father’s family back to Mexico in 1850 and said there was no evidence of native ancestry.
Cruz and the family’s middle sister, Trudy Orlando, were both convinced by the research. On Saturday, less than a month after their sister’s death at age 75, The San Francisco Chronicle published a comments column by Keeler under the headline, “Sacheen Littlefeather is a Native American icon. Her sisters say she is an ethnic scammer.”
The column sparked a backlash in the Native American community on social media.
Some condemn Littlefeather, says she fabricated an identity to advance her Hollywood career. But others strongly opposes Keeler’s investigation, said it overlooked the complicated ways Indigenous identities can be formed, especially for those who don’t meet the official criteria for tribal membership. Enrollment usually requires proof of tribal affiliation, often described as a percentage of “Indian bloodline” or “blood count”.
“What many people don’t understand about the existence of Indigenous Peoples is that some Indigenous Peoples are not registered,” said Laura Clark, a Muscogee and Cherokee journalist, wrote in Variety in response to Keeler’s column.
“Some Indigenous peoples are reconnecting with their tribes,” writes Clark. “Some natives don’t have enough ‘Indian blood’ to register because of the minimal blood count. And some indigenous peoples have been so nearly wiped out of their tribes that organized citizenship records simply do not exist. “
Poet Shoshone nila northsun, a friend of Littlefeather from their college days in the 1970s, said this week that she was not surprised Keeler found no tribal connections in family records.
Native Americans may have concealed their identities to avoid discrimination or misidentification, she said.
“It’s what you feel in your heart, and what your belief system is,” says Northsun, who lowers her name. “Just because she’s not registered or can’t be identified on record doesn’t mean she’s not Indigenous.”
In an interview Wednesday, Keeler refuted such assertions, saying that she and volunteer researchers reviewed the records of hundreds of Littlefeather’s relatives. Follow summary of the research she published on Substack.
“Could their family have some distant native blood from hundreds of years ago?” she wrote in the column. “Maybe; many people of Mexican descent do. But Aboriginal identity is more complicated than that. A U.S. citizen of distant French descent cannot apply for French citizenship. And it would be absurd for that person to wear a beret on the stage of the Oscars and speak on behalf of the French nation.”
It is not known whether Littlefeather ever attempted to enroll in a tribe. The Pascua Yaqui tribe of Arizona said in a statement that Littlefeather is not a registered member of the tribe, and neither are her parents.
“However,” said the tribe, “that does not mean that we can independently confirm that she is not of general Yaqui ancestry, coming from Mexico or the Southwestern United States.”
The White Mountain Apache tribe in Arizona did not immediately issue a statement.
Littlefeather was born Marie Cruz in 1946 and has said in interviews over the years that her father, Manuel Ybarra Cruz, was the White Mountain Apache and Yaqui and abused her and her mother, Geroldine Cruz, who was of the lineage. follow France, Germany and the Netherlands.
Rozalind Cruz, 65, of Big Arm, Mont., and Orlando, 72, of San Anselmo, California, vehemently opposed their sister’s account of their father’s alcoholism and abuse. He died in 1966 at the age of 44, when Littlefeather was 19.
By age 26, Littlefeather fully identified as Native American when she protested at the Oscars, wearing a deerskin dress, moccasins, and a hair tie. She spent the next five decades as an activist in the Native American community and was married to Charles Johnston, a member of Oklahoma’s Otoe-Missouria Tribe, who died last year.
She has become a revered figure for some. In August, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that they have sorry Littlefeathercalled her treatment at the Oscars, where she was booed, “without basis and without reason.”
In a statement on Thursday, the Academy Museum, which hosts an event honoring Littlefeather in September, said they were aware of claims dating back decades to her background but that “the Academy recognizes self-identification”.
Cruz says her father, who is deaf and communicates using sign language or blackboards, never told her about Native American relatives.
She said she grew up knowing she had Hispanic and Mexican heritage but also believed for most of her life that she was “probably about a quarter” Native American because of her claimed identity. chant of her sister.
Cruz said she even applied last November to become a member of the White Mountain Apache Tribe but was turned down because the tribe could not find records to support her claim. But that all changed after her sister’s death. She recalls telling Keeler over the phone: “You’re right. She is a scammer. She is a fake. “
Some scholars agree, saying Keeler’s research is convincing.
“Keeler proves that Littlefeather was a troubled woman who made other people’s stories her own,” said Liza Black, associate professor of history and Native American and Native American studies at the University of California. Indiana University, and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, said.
She said that many Indigenous people understand the complexities of identity due to many affiliated tribes, blood restrictions and adoption, but “Littlefeather doesn’t fall under any really, really, really indigenous identities. And how complicated.”
Keeler’s research to prove that people are faking Indian identities has led to a reaction from critics, who say her work creates a cloud of suspicion for all natives.
It suggests that “Indigenous peoples need to create a system where they have to prove who they say they are,” says Andrew Jolivétte, director of Native American and Indigenous studies at the University of California San Diego, who describes himself as the Creole of Opelousa. , Atakapa Ishak, of French, African, Irish, Italian and Spanish descent.
“Why should American Indians do it and not others?” he added.
For Keeler, being a Native American or an American Indian was part of a well-defined political group that existed before contact with European colonists.
“We are not just an identity,” she said. “We are really a political class. We are citizens of nations. We have sovereignty.” Her goal, she said, is to prevent non-Indians from profiting from false claims of being Native American.
“We want real change and we want real justice, and that’s not going to happen when it’s all up to the actors who play us,” she said.
For her part, Cruz said she has no regrets.
“All I did was I put a pebble out there,” she said. “And I let the water run.”
