Holding a sophomore portrait of her sister Maria Cruz at her home in Marin County, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023, Trudy Orlandi wrote about the woman who would later become famous as Native American activist Sashen Littlefeather. I’m talking (Carl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

In March of 1973, Sacheen Littlefeather hung up in her San Francisco apartment looking giddy. It was Marlon Brando who made her call, she told her sister Trudy Orlandi. Just in case he wins Best Actor for “The Godfather” the next night.

At the time, Brando was a top Hollywood supporter of the American Indian Movement and met Littlefeather through his neighbor, Francis Ford Coppola. And Brand decided to cast the 26-year-old aspiring actress as an Oscar surrogate, denied the award, denounced negative stereotypes of Native Americans in entertainment, and suffered an injured knee in South Dakota. It brought attention to the protests of the occupation.

Orlandi didn’t understand Brando’s choice. For her, Sachen was Marie-Louise Cruz from Salinas, who had a Mexican-American father and a white mother. I saw him stoically take the Oscar stage and tell 85 million viewers around the world that he was an Apache.

“It was a moving presentation, but I was pretending to be Sashen,” said Orlandi, who now lives in Marin County. “And White Mountain Apache? Where did it come from?”

For Orlandi, it was the beginning of Littlefeather’s nearly half-century of hoaxes.

Since Littlefeather died on Oct. 2 in Novato at the age of 75, Orlandi, 72, and another sister, Rosalind Cruz, 65, have learned that their estranged activist sister has learned the identity of the White Mountain Apache. It has sparked an uproar in Native American circles by claiming that it spent 50 years counterfeiting the and yaki. They say the sister’s speech was the first time anyone in the Salinas family had spoken about being Native American.

Of his Oscar appearance, Cruise of Lake County, Montana said, “It was frustrating. I thought, ‘Oh, this is the length you need to start acting.'”

In October, the claim came into the public eye when Native American journalist Jacqueline Keeler published an investigation into the Mexican ancestry of Littlefeather’s California-born father, Manuel Cruz. It is known for its aggressive efforts to drive out alleged “pretendians” who falsely claim to be indigenous. Her research, including records dating back to 1850, revealed no connection between the Cruz family of Mexico and the White Mountain Apache and Yaqui tribes.

None of Littlefeather’s relatives were identified as Native American, Keeler said. The Pasqua Her Yaqui Tribe of Arizona told the news agency that Little Feather was not registered and White Her Mountain Her Apache tribe had not responded to media inquiries about her membership.

As the 50th anniversary of Little Feather’s Academy Awards ceremony approaches, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences continues to showcase Little Feather as a symbol of diversity in a glitzy new museum in Los Angeles. history.

Academy representatives say the organization is aware of “self-identification.” But I inserted a disclaimer at the beginning of her three-hour interview with Littlefeather. its YouTube channel, It states that oral histories “should not be understood as statements of fact.” In that interview, Littlefeather claims to have been raised in poverty by an abusive alcoholic father and “abandoned” by parents who were mentally ill and unable to care for them. The Feather sisters say those claims are false.

Bridget Nekony, a longtime Bay Area friend of Littlefeather, said she never suspected Littlefeather was an Apache or a Yaki. Nekony, a registered member of the Pueblo of Acoma, New Mexico, and former assistant director of undergraduate admissions at the University of California, Berkeley, said. She said, “She may not have had a piece of paper to prove it, but she has no doubt who she was.”

Other scholars and activists say Littlefeather’s alleged fraud was an “open secret” for years, and that she hid, embellished, or fabricated details of her biography. Ranada War Jack, one of the student organizers of the 19-month Native American occupation of Alcatraz that began, told the news outlet: native. “

“This is one of the biggest hoaxes. It’s definitely the biggest hoax since Iron Eyes Cody,” said an American Indian studies lecturer in San Marcos, California, who was at one point asked to write for Littlefeather’s memoir. One Dina Giglio Whitaker said. Cody is a second-generation Italian-American actor who, after playing roles in the early 1970s film, television, and public service announcement “Keep America Beautiful,” falsely claimed he was American. Notorious for.

The Littlefeather sisters went public with the fraud allegations after learning of her death. Because the “lies” of the sisters slandered her parents Manuel and Geroldine her Cruz. In fact, their parents were self-employed horse saddle makers who raised their three daughters in a loving middle-class home. Jeroldine Cruz was neither an abused wife nor a psychopath.The deaf father never touched alcohol or abused his children. It is said that he died of cancer at the time.

It was around the same time that Littlefeather reportedly suffered a breakdown.she spent a year in Agnews Insane Asylum in Santa Clara Diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, which includes mood swings, hallucinations, and delusions.