Maria Louise Cruz (November 14, 1946 – October 2, 2022), better known as Sacheen Littlefeather, was an American-born actress and activist for Native American civil rights. After her death, she was accused by family members and journalists of falsely claiming to have Native American ancestry.
Littlefeather represented Marlon Brando at the 45th Academy Awards (the Oscars) in 1973, where she — on Brando's behalf — declined the Best Actor award that he won for his performance in The Godfather. The favorite to win the award, Brando boycotted the ceremony as a protest against Hollywood's portrayal of Native Americans and to draw attention to the standoff at Wounded Knee. During her speech, the audience's response to Brando's boycott was divided between booing and applause.
After the Academy Awards speech, Littlefeather worked in hospice care. She continued her activism for Native American issues, especially including healthcare and unemployment. She also produced films about Native Americans. In June 2022, the Academy sent Littlefeather a statement of apology that was read in full at An Evening with Sacheen Littlefeather on September 17, two weeks before her death.
Littlefeather said her father was of Apache and Yaqui ancestry and her mother was of European descent. Shortly after Littlefeather's death, Navajo writer and activist Jacqueline Keeler interviewed Littlefeather's two sisters, who said that their family is not Native American and that Littlefeather fabricated her Native American ancestry. They also said that their father, who was born in Oxnard, California, was of Spanish-Mexican descent and had no tribal ties.
Littlefeather was born Marie Louise Cruz or Maria Louise Cruz on November 14, 1946, in Salinas, California. Her mother, Geroldine Marie Cruz (née Barnitz), was a leather stamper of French, German, and Dutch descent, and was born and raised in Santa Barbara, California. Littlefeather's father was Manuel Ybarra Cruz, a saddlemaker of Mexican descent who was born and raised in Oxnard, California.
Littlefeather repeatedly claimed that her father had White Mountain Apache and Yaqui ancestry. However, her sisters, as well as researchers who have looked into the claim, confirm that he was of Spanish-Mexican ancestry with no known ancestors who had a tribal identity in Mexico, and he had no connection to the Yaqui or White Mountain Apache tribes of Arizona.
Both Geroldine and Manuel were saddlemakers. Geroldine learned the craft from Leo Leonard, who owned Leonard Saddle Company in Santa Barbara, and Manuel learned to make saddles as a boy in San Francisco. By 1949, they had moved to Salinas and opened up their own business, Cruz Saddlery. Geroldine Cruz continued to operate the business after her husband's death in 1966.
Littlefeather attended North Salinas High School from 1960 to 1964 and was active in 4-H, winning awards in home economics categories such as food preservation and fashion. After high school, she attended Hartnell Junior College and studied elementary education.
Littlefeather said that around age 19, she spent a year in a psychiatric hospital after previously hearing voices that pushed her to a suicide attempt, recounting what happened during a three-hour visual history interview in 2022 with the director of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. According to Littlefeather, the institution was a "hell hole" and doctors used what she said was "psychodrama" role-playing her parents "while black-hooded figures listened in a dim-lit room" to help her "reconstruct memories of childhood abuse and abandonment." Littlefeather said she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. In 1969, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to pursue a modeling career, with a portfolio of photos taken by Kenneth Cook of Cook's Photography. She said she had been treated with thorazine and other medications but "mostly stabilized with much help" from the San Francisco Bay Area Native American community.
While she attended California State College at Hayward (now California State University, East Bay) and studied dramatics and speech, she continued to cultivate a Native American identity. In 1969, she joined the United Bay Indian Council. She claimed to have participated part-time in the occupation of Alcatraz in 1970, though this claim has been disputed. Around this time, she adopted the name Sacheen Littlefeather. She said she chose the name Sacheen because that was the name her father called her before he died, and Littlefeather came from the feather she always wore in her hair. She learned more about Native American customs from elders and other protesters, such as Adam Fortunate Eagle (then known as Adam Nordwall). In an interview after her Academy Awards appearance, Fortunate Eagle confirmed that Littlefeather had supported the protest at Alcatraz; however, according to an article published after Littlefeather's death, activist LaNada War Jack, who was at Alcatraz, said Littlefeather was not there.
In 1974, Littlefeather attended classes at the American Conservatory Theater, studying acting, yoga, fencing, Shakespeare, dancing, and other various skills for her acting career. She played the role of Paleflower in Winterhawk, filmed in Kalispell, Montana.
In interviews, Littlefeather said she had a difficult childhood. In a 1974 interview, she stated that her mother left her father when she was four and took her to live with her maternal grandparents. In 1988, she stated that her parents lived next door to her maternal grandparents, Marie and Gerold "Barney" Barnitz, while she and her two younger sisters lived with those grandparents. She characterized this as either being "adopted", or in foster care. During a 1976 television interview, she described her father as abusive. She said her mother and two sisters were subject to their father's rage and beatings.
In an opinion piece following her death, Navajo writer and activist Jacqueline Keeler wrote that Littlefeather's sisters disputed that their father had been abusive and that Littlefeather's account of her childhood seemed to have been taken from that of her father, who had grown up in poverty and whose own father was abusive.
Aspiring to become an actress, Littlefeather picked up several radio and television commercial credits and joined the Screen Actors Guild. She later said that she "learned early in life that there was probably a place for me in the dramatic art field, acting [...] if you have a parent who's deaf, you naturally have to act out messages to them", referring to communicating with her father. In 1970, as "Sacheen Littlefeather of Alcatraz", she was named Miss Vampire USA, a promotion for House of Dark Shadows.
While living in the San Francisco Bay area in the early 1970s, Littlefeather participated in the 1971 American Indian Festival at Foothill College, judged a local 1972 beauty pageant as "Princess Littlefeather", and organized a 1972 American Indian Festival at the Palace of Fine Arts. She worked at a radio station, KFRC, for about six months and did freelance reporting for PBS member station KQED.
Playboy magazine planned a spread called "10 Little Indians" in 1972, and one of the models was Littlefeather, but the spread was cancelled. A year later in October 1973, due to her Academy Award appearance fame, they ran the photographs of Littlefeather as a stand-alone feature. Littlefeather was personally criticized for what was seen as exploitation of her fame, but she explained that it was "strictly a business agreement" to earn the money needed to attend the World Theater Festival in Nancy, France. Looking back at the photo shoot, Littlefeather later said, "I was young and dumb."
In January 1973, she appeared in "Make-up for Minority Women' and was identified as a professional model. As a spokesperson for the National American Indian Council, she protested President Richard Nixon's budget cuts to federal Indian programs in February 1973. On March 6, 1973, she participated in a meeting between the Federal Communications Commission and members of several minority groups about the representation of minorities on television. In an interview published just before her Academy Awards appearance, she stated that she had helped send two Indian nurses to Wounded Knee and that she had relinquished her United States citizenship, along with seven Native Americans.