Stick a Feather in Her Cap

 

Somewhere deep in the forests primeval, another unicorn dies.

Posthumously, we discover that yet another famous Native American is not. Her sisters have revealed that Sacheem Littlefeather, the Apache princess who famously declined Marlon Brando’s Oscar for The Godfather to protest the treatment of American Indians, did not have Indian blood. She was of Mexican, specifically Spanish, ancestry. She was putting on the buckskin in vain hopes of getting work as an actress.

And so she joins the long parade of other bogus Indians: Grey Owl, Iron Eyes Cody, Elizabeth Warren, the ahistorical Chief Seattle of the famous speech. “Pretendians” has its own Wikipedia entry.

What does this tell us?

That there is no discrimination against, or oppression of, native Canadians or native Americans. Just the opposite; it is advantageous to one’s career to claim to be Indian. People will always give an Indian the time of day and the benefit of the doubt. Nobody was falsely claiming to be Jewish in Nazi Germany. 

What about blackface? Weren’t blacks oppressed; yet aren’t whites oftgen caught pretending to be black?

Not really. Nobody was ever really fooled here. Blacks sought to “pass” as whites; except on the stage, whites were not trying to pass as blacks. 

Being black was, however, advantageous in a certain context: as entertainers. Blacks were preferred as entertainers. They supposedly sang better, danced better, were better musicians, and better comedians. Contrary to contemporary popular opinion, stage blackface was not a matter of mockery, but of admiration.