Sacheen Littlefeather, Who Claimed Native-American Heritage, a 'Fraud,' Say Sisters

"Apache" actor Sacheen Littlefeather, the Native-American icon who took the stage at the 1973 Oscars dressed in a beaded buckskin dress in place of Marlon Brando to speak about the mistreatment of Native Americans by the film industry, is a fraud and wasn't Native American, her sisters told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Littlefeather died earlier this month.

Her sisters, Rosalind Cruz and Trudy Orlandi, told the Chronicle that their father was born in Oxnard, California, and that his family came there from Mexico.

"It is a fraud," Cruz said. "It's disgusting to the heritage of the tribal people. And it's just ... insulting to my parents."

Littlefeather claimed White Mountain Apache and Yaqui Indian heritage and referred to herself as "an urban Indian." The Arizona tribe is federally recognized.

But the sisters told Native American journalist Jacqueline Keeler that they identified as Spanish and that their family never claimed this heritage growing up.

"My review of her father's side of the family tree, where she claimed her Native heritage, found no documented ties between his extended family and any extant Native-American nations in the United States," Keeler told the Chronicle.

Orlandi and Cruz said they decided to speak out against their sister to clear their parents' name — Littlefeather in 1974 told the Berkeley Gazette that she grew up in poverty living "in a shack in Salinas."

She also said her father was abusive.

Cruz told said her father "was deaf and he had lost his hearing at 9 years old through meningitis."

"He was born into poverty. His father, George Cruz, was an alcoholic who was violent and used to beat him. And he was passed to foster homes and family. But my sister Sacheen took what happened to him," she added.

They also panned Littlefeather's story about how she obtained her last name.

"That she danced in front of my father and always wore a feather in her hair, in her head? And that's when my father called her 'Littlefeather'? That's another fantasy,'" they said.

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