Sacheen Littlefeather: Fact Or Fiction? The Academy Museum Owes An Exhibit
25.10.2022 - 01:11
/ deadline.com
As this is written, the interested public is still waiting for something, anything, from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences or its movie museum by way of response to their latest crisis.
Said crisis was provoked over the weekend by a detailed column in the San Francisco Chronicle claiming that the late Sacheen Littlefeather, recently celebrated and apologized to by the Academy for her on-stage Native American activism and the backlash thereto, was not a Native American at all.
Rather, said the column, citing documents and interviews with Littlefeather’s two surviving sisters, she was of European and Mexican-American extraction, with little or no Indian blood. What she did have, the piece said, was a history of instability, and of spreading untrue stories about her background and the alcoholism and abusive behavior of her California-born, Hispanic father.
Queried about the reports on Monday, a spokesperson for the Academy did not respond, while a spokesperson for the museum said that it “respectfully declines commenting on Saturday’s op-ed.”
Given the Academy’s investment in Littlefeather—who earlier this year received a formal letter of apology from the Academy’s then-president David Rubin, followed by a night of reconciliation that recalled her 1973 on-stage rejection of Marlon Brando’s Oscar, packaged with a three-hour “visual history” interview conducted by the museum’s director, Jacqueline Stewart—it’s going to take more than that. A lot more.
In truth, the museum’s credibility now hangs on getting Littlefeather right. If she has been unfairly tagged for manufacturing family history and trading on false cultural identity, researchers and lawyers at that repository of film history should be