Maybe they shared some of the same delusional schizoaffective traits that their sister had. Originating from any cause, delusion is a powerful persuader. Just ask any former Rethuglican party member.
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And deception, writ large now but once a survival technique, is harm that will bring down our country…unless we act decisively. Vote and keep the truth out front at all times.
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Hard disagree. I’m not going to get drawn into a discussion around systemic disenfranchisement and inherent bias in institutional systems (in which I’ve spent my entire working life), but the above proposal is notable in its inadequacy.
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Whatever our political persuasions, we should not be afraid of the truth. And, Thou Shalt Not Lie.
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I only wish Marlon Brando had shown up but he was a maverick in many areas of his life. The Godfather may have been the best film he made, maybe the best film ever made and he sent someone who turned out to be a fraud because he didn’t give a damn about his art.
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No. There are multiple layers to how the different first nations view indigeneity, and while traceable “blood ties” or familial ties are often important, that’s not the same thing as sharing x% of DNA. The fact that Littlefeather has no documented familial or cultural ties to any specific living or dead White Mountain Apache or Yaqui is enough to settle the notion that whatever her genetics, she wasn’t White Mountain Apache or Yaqui in any culturally relevant way.
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I’m not sure what to make of this story.
Littlefeather became famous in 1973 or so. I lived on the White Mountain Apache Reservation[1] for a while in the late 1970s.
I don’t remember Littlefeather ever being mentioned by any tribal member while I was there, and most of my work was with tribal members. Also, there were often big community events (like the All-Indian Rodeo Cowboy Association rodeo) where dignitaries and locally famous folks would often be recognized before the crowd. I don’t remember hearing about her there either.
In fact, until this article came out, I wasn’t aware that her claim to tribal membership involved the White Mountain Apache. None of this proves anything, but it just seems odd to me. I think I would have heard of her connection to the tribe given her fame.
[1] Also known as the “Fort Apache Reservation.”
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And as ALL of the articles point out, it is reasonable to conclude that she did have Native ancestry (to some degree) and that her father’s family may actively and intentionally attempted to obscure their blood quanta. And how would we know if they succeded in doing it?
Parallels to this behavior abound. Are you gay? Many still don’t publicly admit it for fear of reprisals. Italian families dropped letters to Anglicize (not the Ellis Island apocrypha). Rafael Cruz, Nimrata Haley, and Pyush Jindal all ditched their ethnic heritage to become (Republican) politicians.
I don’t completely discount the research “proving” Littlefeather’s lack of status, but there is an awful lot of unambiguous “she intentionally or psychopathically lied” language out there right now.
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This woman was named Marie Louise Cruz by her parents. She adopted the name Sacheem Littlefeather when she was 24 years old.
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Last night I was at a concert given by a Canadien group, Bucky & The Rodeo Kings. They are a group made up of several of our finest musicians; they all come from a city just west of Toronto called Hamilton. It’s also know as The Hammer and was our steel town but now is much more in many ways. Tom Wilson leads the band. He is a Mohawk artist in many fields including art and writing. Several of the others have backed up American artists including Emmy Lou Harris. On that night they had many guests from the Hammer; Daniel Lanois was one. There was a special guest on Organ; Ken Pearson. This is him now in the picture. He was Janis Joplin’s organist in the Full Tilt Boogey Band. He still has the chops and accented beautifully to the sounds. I thought you might get a kick out of this. Steal it if you like.
found this after
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Treating people as individuals instead of symbols is…“inadequate”? You are part of the problem.
She lied. People who are part of a community can easily demonstrate their membership. She was not around, and no one knew her. This is not rocket science.
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And while we’re at it, let me put in a couple of additional plugs for other great Native artists, not all of whom have received their due:
The great John Trudell (d2015), who most definitely was at the Alcatraz occupation in 1969, who led the AIM through much of the 1970s, and whose pregnant wife and three children were murdered in a (never-solved) house fire on the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes reservation:
When he died, his family posted this to his FB page: “My ride showed up. Celebrate Love. Celebrate Life.”
The great Jesse Ed Davis (d1988), slide guitarist for Taj Mahal, and the inspiration behind Duane Allman’s version of “Statesboro Blues”: Jesse’s solo here, “Ain’t That a Lot of Love,” starts at around 2:26:
The great Buffy St-Marie, thankfully still with us, here singing her own “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” a song dedicated to Anna May Aquash, murdered for her activism:
[Intro]
Indian legislations on the desk of a do-right Congressman
Now, he don’t know much about the issue
So he picks up the phone
And he asks advice from the senator out in Indian country
[A darling of the energy companies
Who are ripping off what’s left of the reservations, huh]
[Verse 1]
I learned a safety rule
I don’t know who to thank
Don’t stand between the reservation and the corporate bank
They’ll send in federal tanks
It isn’t nice but it’s reality
[Chorus]
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee
Deep in the Earth
Cover me with pretty lies
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee
[Verse 2]
They got these energy companies who want the land
And they’ve got churches by the dozens, want to guide our hands
And sign our Mother Earth over to pollution, war and greed
(Get rich, get rich quick)
[Chorus]
[Verse 3]
Huh, we get the federal marshals, we get the covert spies
We get the liars by the fire and [we get the FBIs
They lie in court and get nailed and still Peltier goes off to jail]
(The bullets don’t match the gun)
[Bridge]
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee
An eighth of the reservations
(Bury my heart at Wounded Knee)
Was transferred in secret
(Bury my heart at Wounded Knee)
The murder and intimidation
(Bury my heart at Wounded Knee)
[Verse 4]
[Huh, and my girlfriend Annie Mae talked about uranium
Her head was filled with bullets and her body dumped
The FBI cut off her hands and told us she’d died of exposure]
[Chorus]
[Verse 5]
We had the Gold Rush Wars, ah, didn’t we learn to crawl
And now our history gets written in a liar’s scrawl
They tell ya “Ayy, honey, you can still be an Indian
D-d-down at the Y on Saturday nights”, no
I’m Settler–though there were long-held stories in my family too, about Native blood, now all debunked by DNA testing–and I will never, ever, ever abandon the quests for reparations, because of my own ancestors’ culpability in enslavement and genocide. And I’ll fight.
As George MacDonald Fraser’s “Harry Flashman” character put it, “Sometimes you just have to put on your paint.”
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Those are great! I guess you have seen Rumble, the documentary about the Indigenous influences and musicians in North American music. If not, try to find it online.
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I have indeed. It’s good!
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Glad to see someone’s keeping the dream alive. Janis was one month older than I and she LIVED!!! until she died.
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Can’t question Brando’s committment though, he was an A1 ally
https://www.historylink.org/file/5332
There was a niche for fake Indians to make a living off white people back then too
it’s even a multigenerational grift
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I only remember hearing about this when I was a kid. As a movie and clothing sociology student, when I saw her pictures attached to articles about her death, the very first thing I thought of was “That outfit and hairstyle are phony.” especially the hairstyle which was about 1970s idea of indigenous person’s hair, not how different tribes wear theirs. And her outfit was so Hollywood that I can’t believe her protest was about the exploitation and erasure of real indigenous identity. And how did Brando meet her? There is a real need in the fashion world to stop appropriating different tribal dress and regalia.
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If you want to see an indigenous person roll their eyes, tell them you had a Native American great great grandmother.
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It’s hard to judge photos from the time because people had their cultures virtually destroyed through boarding schools etc… and during a time of starting to reclaim them from the 60s onward, people started with what they could get and eventually dug deeper to more specific material
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