Introduction
Since their inception in 1929, the Academy Awards have been a source of spectacle, whether that be a result of the projects awarded, stars shunned, or mishaps narrowly avoided. While there are many examples one might point to, a particularly prominent instance took place at the 45th Academy Awards ceremony in 1973. That year saw the nomination of Marlon Brando for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his work in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, and it was widely assumed that Brando would take the prize home. While the Academy did indeed vote to honor Brando with the Oscar, he never received the prize. Instead, Brando boycotted the awards ceremony and sent a woman named Sacheen Littlefeather to refuse the award on his behalf. As the Oscars took place, Brando was on his way to Wounded Knee, South Dakota, to join in the town’s occupation by members of the American Indian Movement (AIM). In refusing to accept the Academy Award, Brando aimed to criticize Hollywood for its negative depictions of Native Americans as well as to call for substantial and meaningful change. Though in many ways this protest was not taken seriously and thus denied any significant impact, it is notable both for Brando’s use of the Oscars to make a political statement, as well as for the involvement of Sacheen Littlefeather, herself a Native actor. As such, this exhibit focuses on Sacheen Littlefeather and her refusal of Marlon Brando’s Academy Award in 1973, the cultural response to such an act, and the later attempts at redress from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The goal of this exhibit is to investigate Hollywood’s relationship with Indigeneity through the lens of one particular event. Native Americans have always been part of the film industry, and motion pictures have long been a site of contested Indigenous identity. Rather than take a survey of the way in which this relationship has evolved over the last century, this exhibit examines how Hollywood reacted when confronted with an accusation that it was not only complicit, but active in perpetuating harmful stereotypes of Native Americans. Brando’s refusal of the Oscar functions particularly well in this regard because it came at a time when Hollywood believed itself to be doing well in terms of Native representation. Moving away from past depictions of Indigenous Americans as “savages” or “uncivilized,” Hollywood now romanticized Native people as the last vestiges of the American Frontier, as seen in projects such as The Last of the Mohicans (1971). The Native characters in these projects were still heavily stereotyped, but because they appeared to be more positive, Hollywood was loath to admit to its racism. Too, this project seeks to center Littlefeather in discussions of an event to which she was integral, despite being largely ignored after the fact. Although she was herself an actor and held leadership positions in Native American activism groups, news and media commentary on the refusal tended to focus almost entirely on Brando. Littlefeather was often mentioned only in passing, with authors frequently describing what she wore and minimizing her own career. In focusing on Littlefeather, this exhibit attempts to restore her agency and power in the event.
The core of this exhibit is the broadcast footage of Littlefeather refusing Brando’s Oscar during the awards ceremony on March 27, 1973. In it, Littlefeather is seen onstage declining to accept the award; she then gives a short speech explaining her presence, and noting that she has a longer statement from Brando that she will deliver to the press later. Supporting this item are two other videos taken during the 1973 Academy Awards, which feature presenters Raquel Welch and Clint Eastwood making jokes in response to Littlefeather’s actions. Taken together, these three items make up the “Refusal” portion of the exhibit and document what took place on March 27, 1973 at the 45th Academy Awards ceremony.
The next portion of the exhibit, “Reaction,” takes stock of popular responses to the event, pulling from major newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. These articles, op eds, and letters to the editor detail how those who witnessed the event responded, and highlight the bias and racism present in those reactions. Furthermore, they showcase the ways in which Brando was continually centered over Littlefeather or the American Indian Movement, despite his intention being to take action in support of their goals.
The final portion of the exhibit, “Redress,” looks at two items from 2022 to examine how the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences took steps to apologize to Littlefeather for its behavior, as well as how Littlefeather herself reflected on the event. These objects highlight the significance of the events to those involved decades after the fact, and they also demonstrate the Academy’s continuing reluctance to take responsibility for its actions, given the fact that it took fifty years for such an apology to appear.
In crafting this exhibit, the work of several archival theorists proved engaging and necessary for thinking about how to present archival sources. Most broadly, discussion of reading against the grain was immensely useful in presenting Littlefeather as the center of the project. Though she is mentioned in nearly every source, Littlefeather is rarely the authors’ focus, with attention instead being placed on Brando. As such, reading against the grain in the tradition of scholars like Saidiya Hartman allowed me to ensure that Littlefeather remained present and active in discussion of this event for which she was so important.
I also took into account Scott Larson’s work on critical trans-attendance, as described in his work “Laid Open: Examining Genders in Early America.” Larson proposes trans-attendance as analysis which “shifts the scene of inquiry to attend to alternate frameworks and articulations of power that surround the subject of examination” (352). In the context of Larson’s work, this means refusing the impulse to place modern conceptions of gender and identity onto historical genderqueer subjects, instead allowing the subjects themselves to choose their labels. For the purposes of this exhibit, Larson’s theory has been modified slightly, though the core principle remains the same. Instead of being faced with the imposition of identity from modern voices, Littlefeather’s identity as Indigenous was contested in 1973 as she entered public discourse. While Littlefeather identified herself as an Apache woman, several sources mark her as only part Native American, or even go so far as to call her Indigenous heritage into question. Given that this exhibit is focused on her work as an Native activist, and in keeping with Larson’s critical trans-attendance, I wanted to respect Littlefeather’s identity in the exhibit’s language and so chose not to reference those external claims. When Littlefeather is identified in text or in tags, it is as Indigenous, Native American or Apache, as these were the words she used to describe herself.
Finally, in selecting the items for this exhibit, I pulled from Kenneth E. Foote’s “To Remember and Forget: Archives, Memory, and Culture,” which was published in The American Archivist in 1990. There, Foote remarks that “even though documents and markers may be the preeminent means of sustaining memory in human communication, they are not the only way, and they benefit from interaction with other communicational resources” (383). Though many of the items in this exhibit center text, there are also multiple moving image items which provide more diversity of medium. Particularly given film and television’s roles as major cultural contributors, and this event’s existence as one which called attention to the power of Hollywood to shape cultural perception, it is fitting that non-textual items be included.