Claims that Sacheen Littlefeather lied about Native ancestry spark controversy, pain and anger

Bombshell report ‘tries to make black and white things that actually have nuance,’ according to Native critics

Sacheen Littlefeather’s legacy of activism was cemented with her appearance at the 1973 Academy Awards, where she took the stage on Marlon Brando’s behalf to speak against the widespread mistreatment of Native American people in the film industry.

Less than a month after her death, the San Francisco Chronicle published claims in the outlet’s opinion section that allege Littlefeather was not Native and spent most of her life fraudulently claiming Apache and Yaqui ancestry, igniting furious criticism aimed at both Littlefeather and the author.

Littlefeather died on 2 October following a breast cancer diagnosis. She was 75.

Writer Jacqueline Keeler, whose own controversial history includes publishing a list of people she named “Pretendians” in 2021, said she interviewed Littlefeather’s younger sisters, who claimed that Littlefeather lied about her ancestry to advance her career.

The article and Ms Keeler’s allegations have drawn significant backlash from Native American critics who have accused Ms Keeler of targeted harassment, policing Native identity, and slandering Littlefeather’s reputation when she is no longer alive to defend herself.

“I hate that Native people have to spend a single breath talking about Jacqueline Keeler,” Anishinaabe writer Ashley Fairbanks said on Twitter. “There’s so many things hurting our communities, and there’s so many beautiful things to celebrate, and her witch hunt sucks up all the oxygen.”

She added: “It’s up to people’s home community, or the one they claim, to speak out if they feel they’re being harmed. Using tribal enrollment as the only measure of Native identity is so colonial.”

(AP)

Joseph M Pierce, an associate professor of Latin American and Indigenous Studies at Stony Brook University, told The Daily Beast that while he would not be surprised if Ms Keeler’s claims are true, “it’s a little disappointing to me how people can take delight in this.”

“[The piece] tries to make black and white things that actually have nuance,” according to Mr Pierce, adding that the piece “preys on people’s insecurities rather than proposing a type of repair.”

Ms Keeler has faced criticism for a document that lists the names and identifying information of people that implies a kind of “ethnic fraud” is being carried out. Critics have also condemned a highly controversial “colonialist” blood measurement to identify Native ancestry.

Indigenous authorities have stressed that sovereign tribes and nations should be leading their own investigations into citizenship claims, and that alleging “Pretendian” fraud with incomplete or unreliable research and bias – while also falsely accusing actual Native people alongside allegations against others – could advance a harmful agenda and complicate a nuanced understanding of such identities.

Several people on the list have denied the allegations against them in Ms Keeler’s document, including Nadema Agard, who has slammed the document as a “witch hunt” against Native people.

“I don’t want to give Keeler’s shtick oxygen,” wrote Rutherford Falls showrunner Sierra Ornelas.

On 21 October, Littlefeather’s sisters appeared at her funeral mass, where they told mourners that she lived with a lifelong mental illness and had maligned her parents with her accounts of an abusive childhood.

Ms Keeler claimed that there were no family records of their enrollment in any tribes, and Littlefeather’s sisters said that they were troubled to see her “venerated as a saint”.