Actress and Activist Sacheen Littlefeather Dies at 75.
Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
Sacheen Littlefeather, the actress and Native American activist who delivered Marlon Brando’s Academy Award rejection speech, has died. She was 75.
The news comes just two weeks after the the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave a celebration in her honor.
Earlier this year, the Academy offered a formal apology for how it treated Littlefeather after the Oscars.
Littlefeather refused to accept Brando’s award for The Godfather, “And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry,” she said through the crowd’s boos, “and on television in movie reruns and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee.”
Littlefeather’s speech did return national attention to the standoff at Wounded Knee, but it also resulted in death threats and Littlefeather becoming persona non grata in Hollywood. “I was blacklisted, or you could say ‘redlisted,’” Littlefeather said in a documentary about her life. “Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett and others didn’t want me on their shows. […]
The doors were closed tight, never to reopen.” Littlefeather went on to work in health activism, working in the Bay Area treating AIDS patients and teaching traditional Native American medicine.
https://www.vulture.com/2022/10/sach...on-brando.html