Bittersweet Infamy - #98 - I Beg That I Have Not Intruded

Episode Date: April 28, 2024

Taylor tells Josie about activist Sacheen Littlefeather, her protest on behalf of actor Marlon Brando at the 1973 Academy Awards, the disputes around her claims to Indigeneity, and the history of Indigenous identity fraud. Plus: does Denver's infamous haunted horse statue, Blucifer, have a cousin? Did the Wicked Witch of the West really ruin an episode of Sesame Street? Josie puts her undefeated streak on the line in the April Fools' Fact or Fiction Minfamous!

Are you a business owner or marketer looking to reach highly engaged podcast listeners just like you? AdvertiseCast can help. Whether you are looking to promote a national brand across Canada or a regional event or service, we've got you covered. Reach out today to Bob at AdvertiseCast.com. That's E-O-B at AdvertiseCast, as in podcast, dot com. Welcome to Bitter Sweet Infamy. I'm Taylor Basso. And I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on in infamy.

The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the sweet. I recently competed in the finals for my gay dodgeball league and uh and we didn't win because we don't win we're not that kind of team. That's okay they're all type of teams. We're enhancement talent we're out there to make the real stars look good you know. We're the if they're the Harlem Globetrotters we're're the Washington Generals, you know? We're all getting paid at the end of the day.

No one's getting paid for this. I was like, whoa, you get paid for your hobby leave? Well, I get paid in creaky hips and achy knees and all those sorts of things. So as I staggered home, I've happened into this cute little vintage store that had all of these, you know, odd little knickknacks and curios and things as cute little vintage stories do.

And I purchased a couple of games. I purchased one called Who's It? Which is some sort of guessing game. But then I got this other game that's called Snap Judgment. And it's the most fun you can have legally. And it's this very bright purple and red, very vivid 70s. These are both 70s games, 70s boxes and very much look at. Oh wow, yeah, that's a vintage situation.

The board for this is absolutely beautiful. So basically, you are given a series of ridiculous crime situations, and you have to decide whether or not the person involved should be guilty or innocent. God. Yeah. So for example, Morris had been drinking when he entered the bank.

I have a gun in my pocket, he told the teller, and I want all your money. The teller immediately set off a silent alarm, but when she handed Morris the cash, he said he'd been joking all along. He left the bank empty handed and was arrested. Is Morris guilty of attempted robbery? And then you have to then decide that. I think so. I mean, I would say no, because he didn't attempt to rob any...

I mean... I would say no, because he didn't attempt to rob any, I mean, he didn't, I mean, if he could have left, but see, this is the game, anyway. My point being is that feels very akin to a game that we're quite familiar with, which is of course the April Fools Factor Fiction of Infamous, where you're sort of, you're presented with a scenario, Trick or Treat Minfamous, you're presented with a scenario

where you kind of have to make a judgment call, although ours is a little bit different, and ours you need to decide whether the story is real or not. Yeah, but I see it's the same, uh, Ticken of the Old Brain that's happening. Yes. The only difference though, Josie, is that while you've never played Snap Judgment, you have played the factor fiction Mimphemous many a time, and as real ones will know, here in our 98th episode Josie's undefeated in games of all types in Bitter Sweet Symphony, this is my last chance to stop her before we get to episode 100.

Otherwise, I know I need the pressure because nothing else is clear. Clearly. I need to change my approach here. I'm doing something wrong. It happened for years. I need to, I need to smarten up, straighten up and here's what I'm putting on the line.

If you are able to dupe me with your story this week, then I will make a little clips package about the streak for our upcoming special of MLTs. You don't have to do a thing, you don't have to do a thing for it. It'll be on me. It'll be my little gift to you. But, and this is true, no win no package, and I am gonna try to win. The streak is meaningless to me if it is not an earned streak. So I do have to try my best. Okay, that's really rad of you. I, wow. Wow, wow, wow.

Well, don't celebrate yet. I know, I know. Yeah, I'm just the thought. The thought is really sweet. Don't enjoy the thought. I'm gonna stomp that thought into a million. I'm gonna mash it up and serve it back to you spread on toast. Okay? That thought. Okay. Yeah. I hear you. Okay.

Well, I guess I too was thinking about this road to the melties that we're on and all the sights that we're seeing and we stopped to pee that one time. And that gas station was not great. Road to the melt pee. Yep. But we got out of there and I've been looking back on some of our previous Mimphimai in particular. And I was thinking, you know, it would be really nice because these are our shorter stories, the shorter beginning stories that get us like warmed up. Mini infamous stories. Yes, they get us warmed up for the main Mim main infamy. And I was thinking how because they're on

the shorter side and the research is totally there but it's not as engulfing I'd say. I feel like I kind of live in the main infamy stories but the Mimphimai I'm like I'm there for a brief visit. You're visiting, you're there for a good time not a long time. Although Although there are some, some that inevitably end up consuming the, and then you present them and they're 40 minutes and you're like, damn, I really should have just not done this as I'm infamous, I should have just made it the main story. That happens to the best of us. Shows to those Tokalowing kids on the dinghy. But-

But I, uh, I thought, for, for those that aren't proper mini, how nice it would be to kind of return to those and find any updates or find any kind of adjacent stories that go along with these little, little beautiful Mimphomites. So what I have for you today, Taylor Mitchell Basso, are two stories. One is fact and one is fiction. And these stories are in some way connected adjacent to a Mimphomus from our, our, the voting batch. You're playing with fire though.

From the ballot. That's risky. I know. But now you're, now you're cocky. Now that you're 8, 9, 10, 20, 40. This is number 8. This will be... I don't care. No, you are... I really don't even care. Are you joking? That's fucking bitch. Your 8, no, this would be 9 and 0. If you get this, it will be 9 and 0. Our first story, coming down the road, just opposite of us on our road to the melties. We're just passing by. Reddit, which you might be familiar with. A large-based forum website.

They have been downsizing their offices as remote work has increased over the last few years. And last year they even moved out of their mid-market office in San Francisco, and they went to South Market to a much smaller office, about half the size of their old digs. And so they're just kind of downsizing spaces, but this year, well I shouldn't say this year, I should say 2023, they realized that as they had more remote workers, they wanted to have a few more satellite offices in different parts of the country to kind of function as hubs. And so they opened an office in Denver, Colorado. Okay. And part of their office opening, they wanted to install a new piece of public art to celebrate Reddit's arrival in Denver, but also to acknowledge the community and all the public in Denver.

Okay. So they reached out to the Luis Jimenez estate. We know Luis Jimenez, of course, as the person who- How do we know... May I? Sorry, don't let me step on your toes here. Oh no no no my dog, you're not a Google created Bluecifer who's like a very large, I feel like a 32 foot tall blue fiberglass horse with LED eyes and an excruciatingly anatomically correct asshole. Yes.

And you chronicled this in episode 49. The Pottingly Fairies. Do you remember what happened to Luis Jimenez? And you chronicled this in episode 49? 49, the Coddingly Fairies. Do you remember what happened to Luis Jimenez? A part of the statue fell on him and killed him while he was making it, thereby adding to the lore of this haunted demonic horse statue. The artwork, he entitled it Mustang,

but the colloquial term for it is Blucifer. And part of Blucifer fell on him and severed a major artery. Kite Yeah, and he bled out. It was really sad. Karly So intense. He was 65. Yeah. And ever since then, his wife, Susan Jimenez, has been in charge of his estate. His wife, Susan Jimenez, is in charge of the Luis Jimenez estate and he has lots of artwork all over the world. The Whitney Museum has a piece of his. The SF MoMA has a piece.

Like it's all kind of, you know, all over the country and world in general. And when she was approached by Reddit to purchase a piece of his art, according to her, I'll say, I didn't really know what Reddit was. I tried to Google it, but it only led me to Reddit forums that didn't really answer my question, what is Reddit? My grandson finally explained it to me. She was unsure about having this, having Luis's work involved with Reddit. She, in her work, governing the estate, does mainly a lot of licensing stuff. So making sure that,

in particular, Blue Sufer, because it's such a large piece and it's so well known, she is constantly monitoring that the license isn't negated or isn't used fraudulently. So you don't see like, you don't, people aren't profiting off of like t-shirts. You can't sell a little blue cipher without them getting their cut. Yeah, yeah. And so that's a lot of her, a lot of her work. And so she's like, I don't know if I really want more work on my plate to get this out. And it, it's going to be another piece of public art. And in Denver, they're not from Denver, they lived in New Mexico at the time of Luis's

death and she still lives there. But through negotiations with Reddit, and in particular there is an art buyer who was working on behalf of Reddit, His name was Jackson Nickel and he worked, he's kind of a known entity in the art world I guess. I'd never heard of him. But he worked with Susan in particular and really made the case for Reddit. There's a quote from him which he said earlier this year. Jimenez's Mustang, which we colloquially know as Blue Cipher, Jimenez's art is such a quintessential part of Denver's identity now. The way it references Colorado's early reliance on horses, but also how as a sculpture it elicits such exciting responses

from viewers. As Reddit opens a new office in Denver, we want to connect to what has come before us, but also push ourselves and our users into an exciting future." So what Reddit and Jackson have reached out to Susan with is purchasing a piece of art that Luis Jimenez is part of Luis Jimenez estate. The piece of artwork that Jackson Nicol reached out to Susan Jimenez about is a piece called Horse on Fire. So it's the same, like not all of Luis Jimenez's work is horses, like it has different entities, but a large, you've seen it,

a lot of it does depict horses. So this is a nine foot tall fiberglass with urethane finish on a painted fiberboard base. And it is completely red, mainly red with orange in it. And it is the same kind of stance as Mustang or Blucifer, where the horse is on his back two legs, and he's raised up his arms up. It doesn't have the same red eyes, it's more kind of a monochrome of red. And then from the base up, covering butthole in this one, are flames, are like orange flames. Oh.

Yeah. And the tail kind of comes out as like an extinction of the flame. He wanted to sell this one to like a family restaurant. He thought if I don't do the butthole this time, it's maybe a bit more marketable. Right, yeah. Or maybe because it was like smaller, you'd be closer to it.

I don't know. One of those things. It's, and it is pretty big. It's nine feet, but it's not nearly as big as Blucifer. So for Reddit and their art buyer, this horse on fire was kind of this perfect image that coincided with Denver's identity with Blucifer, but it's red, which matches the Reddit colors. And the Reddit name, redit. Redit. It's kind of this nod to the way that

Bluecifer has entered maybe the pop culture of Denver. It's this identity of Denver and it's kind of like, I don't know, Bluecifer is now the main character of a comic book series. Really? character of a comic book series and there's a lot of pop culture and identity coming through with Blucifer. So Reddit, as this forum for culture and knowledge, they're trying to kind of nod to Denver's identity by having a Louise Jimenez horse, but then kind of pushing it, yeah, with this idea of pop culture and with this red, kind of fiery piece of art. The thing that got Susan Jimenez is that in all of their dealings,

this wasn't even a negotiation, Reddit confirmed that it would be public art. It would be installed outside of the offices so that everybody could see it in Denver. Would you really lie on the widow Jimenez's name? I mean, shame on you. Susan wanted it. Susan got it. You disgusting liar. Okay, I'm just trying to see if you'll snap under the pressure.

Jackson Nichols said, we couldn't be more thrilled to have the Jimenez estate entrust us with the honor of owning and displaying this moving piece, Horse on Fire.'" So dealings have been signed. The office has not opened yet. It will open June 1st, but everything is like confirmed, ready to go. They're just doing installation stuff. So on June 1st, they will be in Denver, Colorado. They will be a big celebration and an unveiling of Luis Jimenez's kind of cousin to Blucifer, Horse on Fire.

Okay. So that's story one. That's story one. Okay. Are you ready for story two? Yes, I'm ready for story two. All right. Story two comes to us from another beautiful Mimphemus that you supplied, Taylor Mitchell-Lasso. Okay, one of mine, one of mine. Number 80 from episode 80. Snuffy's parents get a divorce. Yes, Snuffy's parents get a divorce. Exactly. So there are no updates on Snuffy's parents. They are still divorced.

Oh, I was really hoping they patched it up. I really, I was looking for it. I really dug. I really dug. Duh, bummer. But I did find it's not so much an update as an adjacent story. It's, if you will, a prequel to Snuffy. Because I found the story of another whack-a-doodle Sesame Street episode that had to be pulled from the air because there were so many complaints. So this is episode 847, which was the 52nd episode of the seventh season. Okay.

And the episode is lovingly referred to as the Wicked Witch episode. Okay. So, have you recently seen or watched The Wizard of Oz, Taylor? I don't like The Wizard of Oz because I find it too scary. Yes! Okay! Okay! Okay! Good! Mitchell and I just rewatched it actually on 420.

We were really high. Scary. I don't know. Yeah. But it's such a beautiful movie. That movie was made in 1939 and you watch it and it is like crystal clear, absolutely gorgeous. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And weird and scary in particular.

The Wicked Witch of the West is terrifying. This is the green faced. Yes. Like a deep green. And this is before we'd redeemed her as like a tragic heroine with Wicked and so on. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. This is all before that. And before the Sesame Street episode. So this episode was directed by Robert Myram. And it aired February 10th, 1976. And the plotline is that they get Margaret Hamilton, who is the woman who played the wicked witch

of the West in the movie in 1939. So she is, it's 1970s, she's reprising her role. She has her green face and red lips. And the witch. You could do that in today's climate. You'd have to hire a green actor. It wouldn't fly. It wouldn't fly. Just wouldn't fly. Little witch comedy there wouldn't fly. It wouldn't fly. Just wouldn't fly.

Little witch comedy there, wouldn't fly. Yeah, that was good. So, what happens in this episode is Margaret Hamilton, in her like, eeehehehe, like her, it kicks back in, it's like riding a bike, if you will. Hey! She is flying above Sesame Street on her broomstick. And what we see on screen is a Sesame Street character, one of the humans, and he's tending a store on Sesame Street. And this wild, spooky wind

starts to whip around Sesame Street. And out of the sky, he catches a broom. And he's like, oh, well, this is weird. He starts sweeping the sidewalk with it. And from around the corner comes Margaret Hamilton and her green face, spooky witch stuff. And she's like, I have to get my broomstick back. And she approaches our human Sesame Street character and says, give it back to me. You know, she has this like little tussle and she reaches out for the broom. And when she touches it,

and he's touching it, she's essentially, essentially electrocuted. The screen kind of goes black and white and green outlines all the major images. So it's like static, like, all the major images so it's like static like okay spooky oh and I did forget to say when she enters in it's a heavy metal guitar riff that plays. The store owner and the wicked witch of the West have a contentious conversation about give me my broom you weasley little punk blah blah blah blah. She's kind of bad-mouthing him this whole time and he says, no, no, I'm not gonna do that because he's like offended and the whole idea, the whole lesson of the episode is that kids need to, one, learn how to overcome their fears and two, learn how to use nice language saying our please and thank yous in order to

get what we want or you know to interact with the world and the wicked witch is very bad at this. Yes, I mean who among us? It's a tough world out there. Big Bird shows up and she threatens Big Bird. Big Bird's a trip. Fuck Big Bird. You'll tell me you don't like him.

Fuck Big Bird. Big Bird's annoying. Big Bird's a whiny little simp. I do not care for Big Bird. Well, the Wicked Witch would agree with you because she's like, I'm going to turn you into a feather duster. Oh, got him. And yeah, and there's a feather duster that like has all his bright yellow. She hasn't turned him into it, but. Yes.

The fight with the Sword Keeper escalates to the point where she says, if you don't give me my broom, I'm going to turn you into a basketball bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce. Got him. This is fun. And kids didn't like this, huh? Kids were well, it's a long segment. It's about 15 minutes in total. Now, of course, you can see the YouTube video of it. It was leaked by our Reddit user. of it, it was leaked by our Reddit user. And so the scene goes on, the witch is like slinking around trying to do her thing. She ends up by the trash cans where the grouch is Oscar the grouch. He has a name. Yes, I know. I said it. Oscar. It's just like last name first and then first name last. That was all.

Yeah. Vassel, Taylor, Grouch, Oscar. You do always refer to me like you're indexing me in a library. So she's sitting by the cans and she's plotting how she's going to get her broom back. And her plot involves turning into a nice little old lady where Margaret Hamilton's green makeup comes off and she wears like a little flower hat and stuff. But in the meantime, Oscar falls in love with her. That's funny.

They're both green. They're both green. They're both pissy little pirates. It makes perfect sense. Yeah, it makes all the sense in the world. So as her sweet little old lady self, she goes to the store where the storekeeper is, and he's there with another adult and then some kiddos.

And as this little old lady, beep, beep, beep, she tries to get him to give her the broom, but he has to let go of it. And he's like, I'm onto you. This isn't, uh-uh, this isn't happening. And so she turns back into her Wicked Witch ways and she makes it rain in the store. It's pouring rain, pouring rain, pouring rain.

This is kind of a fever dream by now, huh? I think we've lost the thread a bit. Oh yeah. Yeah, I think that's partly why the reaction was negative It's like this isn't no you have to be a little bit more didactic You have to just kind of drive the point show her saying being mean once and then show her saying please once and we kind Of this this could have been yeah, kind of like I mean it couldn't have yeah What the 70s? This could have been an email. This could have been a fax, certainly, if you found a hotel.

Kite-Yeah. Exactly. So she leaves the store and the storekeeper is very on guard. He's like, she's not allowed in here anymore. And Big Bird actually shows up at the front door and he's got a hockey stick and a baseball bat. And he says, where is she? I'll fix her. Which is like very un-Big Bird-like. I was gonna say they hadn't really settled on Big Bird's kind of character at this point,

had they? Yeah. That's this is- Slightly violent there. I was gonna say this sounds like a more empowered Big Bird than Amis do. Maybe a bit of a vigilante. Yeah, yeah. No, I agree. I think that's it. Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. I think that's it. So she learns to say, please and thank you, blah, blah, blah. What, because Big Bird busts her knees in or what?

No, I think the store owner says, like, you have to say please and thank you if you want to get what you want. Blah, blah, blah. And so he finally passes over the broomstick to her and she hasn't learned her lesson because she's like, I'm leaving Sesame Street forever. And she like up and flies away. And there's a scene of her with like the clouds whipping by as she's on her broomstick. And she says, Oh, this is so fun. This is so glorious. Look, no hands. And she takes her hands off of the broomstick and it again falls to Sesame street, falls to the ground into the shopkeeper's hands. And he goes, Oh, I can't do this again. I can't do this again. And Big Bird just gives him a big hug.

And that's the end of the segment. That's kind of funny. That's kind of funny. Yeah. There's a sense of humor to that segment. I would imagine probably more than anything that the children's objection to that segment would just be that the Wicked Witch

is a very scary character. Yes, Yeah. So it aired. There were letters that flooded in. Those fax machines. They found the hotel. They found the hotel, finally. And parents were upset because their kids were upset. There were tears and screams. And I think it's exactly what you said, Taylor. It was kind of banking on the fear that her character had already created in Kiddos who had watched The Wizard of Oz. And the episode did nothing to really address

or dispel the fear. You need to like defang her a bit for this role. You need to make her a little bit, she needs to be like Mario Party Bowser as opposed to like main entry in the series Bowser. She needs to be like a little bit of a fun more fun unlaced version of herself than appears. She's not on the clock right? She's taking a vacay to Sesame Street. Like Look Ma No Hands is getting close. That's true and maybe the Children's Workshop writers had this little hiccup because in the year previous,

in 1975, she had appeared on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. And the whole premise of her and Fred Rogers was like, it was defanging her. Like, they removed the makeup and they said it's all make believe. She's not a bad person. Like make the land of they go into the land of make believe and they instruct kids how like what we're scared of isn't always real and we need to like understand what's real and what's not and what's scary and what's not. Dude Mr. Rogers was the best. Mr. Rogers was good. He knew his shit. He knew it was up. He knew it was up. In the way that these Sesame Street writers a year later did not. No. No. They have a few high-profile L's on their record, eh? Allegedly.

Allegedly. Exactly. So this aired February 10th. In March, they did a test with kiddos and they found that while it didn't send anybody screaming for the door and their test screening, they were going to pull it anyway. And it remained out of the public site until 2021 when a Reddit user leaked it. And now it is available online and you can watch it whenever you want, like I did for this. Yeah. So that's story two. That's story two and that story two is brought to you by the letters I and Z and the number nine. Why those? Because that was

what was in the episode. Oh fun. Cool. I do like this woodland big bird that we see who's like wanting to settle things through civilian justice. I think that's a cool angle for his character. I'm sad they dropped it. I love that Oscar the Grouch falls in love with her. It doesn't get picked up again. It doesn't come back. What a shame! What a shame.

Because that should have been the ending bit, is that Oscar's on the back of the broom with her. He's riding bitch. You're riding bitch. That's funny. So those are your two stories. You have the father of Blucifer being honored and Blucifer's cousin erected close by in Denver, his Reddit cousin, his red Reddit cousin.

Or you have episode 847 of the Wicked Wicks on Sesame Street. So when I was listening to you deliver that first story from the jump I thought it sounded incredibly fake, like fake as hell, like the fakest shit I ever heard, and then as it went on it became more convincing to me. I did already know story two. Okay, okay good. I know story two from my research into the stuffy story So I think that unless you change something significant about that And I and you'd made it one of your half lies. Which I am what to do. Which you made is not impossible. Yeah, I am a half liar. Maybe you freestyled that whole part about the reddit user leak and here's what the episodes about that could have all been fake

But I know that there was a Wicked Witch episode of Sesame Street that didn't go over well, and so I'm going to say that that is the truth. And Taylor, you would be right. Oh, you don't get your video clip packet. You don't have to do it. Yeah! You understand what I did. I don't know why you would do that.

That's maybe what I needed. Maybe that was the incentive that I needed. Josie, it has been a good run. The streak has been a fun little subplot. Yeah, it's good. It's good. Now it's over. I have to get new material. What a shame. I was the real loser here yet again. So glad she's leaving. Oh, not me. I'm glad she came here. Because it was very interesting and really exciting. Exciting? Maybe for you, but not for me.

All I want to do is to get out of here and fly home to Oz where I belong. Room to Oz! My witch! She's flying! Bye, witch. Keep flying. Bye. Boy, I've never been so glad to get rid of somebody in my whole life. Hey, sweethearts! Can't get enough of the bittersweet action? Join us on ko-fi.com, that's K-O-F-I.com slash bittersweetinfamy for the Bittersweet Film Club, our film club for monthly subscribers, where we cover movies with an infamous twist.

For our April-May episode, it's two girl bosses against the world, and each other, as we tackle the 2018 comedy crime thriller, A Simple Favor. You know, we've done it again and we talk about it all the time. Never underestimate the power of like a toxic female friendship. Yeah, doggy. Between two batshit women who love each other too much. Yeah, yeah. That'll just pay dividends 100% of the time.

True. Narratively, it's the best formula we've got. That episode is waiting for you to listen. Just become a monthly subscriber over at ko-fi.com slash bittersweet and feed. Stay sweet and see you at the movies. We are on the road to the Melties in episode 100. We will be, see, you know,

I'm gonna have to dub in a chime there too. So it's just gonna be you and me and the chime. It's just gonna be noise. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's called music, Taylor. What do you think happens when a guitar and drums and a piano play together? God!

I'm gonna say that we in our 100th episode are gonna be celebrating 100 episodes. So fair, sweet, infamy. We're really, really excited for how it's gonna all play out and how can you help contribute to that while we're doing our little award show the melties and you can vote at tinyurl.com slash infamy 100. Please. Infamy 100! Go and cast your votes. Even if you've only listened to five episodes, you think, well, I haven't listened to enough to participate.

Yes, you have. Go! We totally have. Go! We need the validation boost that comes with numbers of votes. And if you look at the list and you're like, I don't remember any of these, but maybe that one? Yeah.

But not your vote. That's it. You did it. You congratulations. Yeah. Nailed it. You've done it. Next episode, episode 99, Josie and I are going to be filling out our balance live on air. We're not going to tell you everyone that we're voting for, but we're going to be walking through the ballot with you and naming some of the selections that we think are standouts and you can do that information what you want.

The rest of you who are all die-hards you're like I know my all 33 of us are safe in the shelter from my make it rain. You're a fine. You don't need us. But you do need to go to tinyurl.com slash infamy100 and cast your votes Infamy100 For the best of the best of this past Three and a half years now, bittersweet infamy. Oh my god, where's my life gone? But since we're on the road to that melties that road to those melties these roads that we are on to dem melties I thought that it would it would be a good idea to do a story with an awards show theme. And usually doing an award show story would

be the cue to blow the roof off and pull the camera back for some sort of a big set piece intro, but instead let's ease into today's story. We're gonna be tackling some tricky and occasionally triggering subject matter together and subjects that evoke a lot of big ideas about identity and redemption and what we owe each other as humans. Okay, so just a little casual situation. Yes, nothing too major. Have you ever heard of sashi in little feather is she the woman who accepted the academy award on behalf of somebody declined the academy award on behalf of marlin brando marlin brando that's it yeah

yeah i have kind of heard of her i I think she wore her traditional dress. Was it one of the first times in Oscar history where there had been this kind of show of dissent? A piece of political protest, yes. It was one of the early instances of that, absolutely. All right, we've exhausted my aquifers of knowledge on this. So why don't I then show you the clip? Oh, yes, please. then show you the clip? Oh yes please.

As we join the clip, actors Roger Moore and Liv Yulman are presenting the award for best actor at the 1973 Academy Awards. The winner is Marlon Brando and the Godfather. Accepting the award for Marlon Brando and the Godfather, Miss Sashin Littlefeather. Hello, my name is Sasheen Littlefeather. I'm Apache and I'm president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee. I'm representing Marlon Brando this evening and he has asked me to tell you in a very long speech, which I cannot share with you presently because of time, but I will be glad to share with the press afterwards that he very regretfully

cannot accept this very generous award. And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry, excuse me, and on television in movie reruns and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee. I beg at this time that I have not intruded upon this evening, and that we will, in the future, our hearts and our understandings will meet with love and generosity. Thank you on behalf of Marlon Brando. I forgot that it was The Godfather. Yeah, it was for Don Corleone and The Godfather.

Make you an offer you can't refuse. Whoa, let's try that one again. Make you an offer you can't refuse. Thank you. That's at least closer. Yeah, we're better. We're better. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Had he already received an Oscar?

I believe so. I think this might have been his second win. Okay, yeah. Pretty rude that people booed her. One, she's the messenger, and two, she's affected by the message as well. Right. But they're implicated by what she's saying. It's, in some ways, it's a chastisement of them because it's about even though it's a very um kindly worded Chastisement of them very respectful chastisement. Yeah. Yeah, he very Regretfully. Yes, and I would argue like a

Reasonable chastisement of them. I will go into it further in the episode But Native American depictions in film weren't particularly kind or thoughtful to this point. No. So it's not an incorrect chastising, but it is them being kind of slapped on the wrist a bit, and they don't seem to have liked it, especially like the section of them that will have been involved with like the Westerns, I'm sure, which is many, right? Right, yeah. Yeah. And I don't know is Marlon

was Marlon Brando in a lot of western? No Marlon Brando Marlon Brando was in the big roles that you might know Marlon Brando from are A Streetcar Named Desire, Godfather, On the Waterfront. Okay yeah. He's in a lot of movies really really handsome really like very distinctive actor. Yeah. Politically active and a bit of a lefty, kind of, generally, in his thinking. And seems, just because of his long and lustrous career, like, a very well-respected member of Hollywood, too. Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely. So what he says or doesn't say carries a lot of weight. I also really liked her dress. Like the front piece of the collar had, like, it was all sequins. She's a pretty of weight. I also really liked her dress. Like the front piece of the collar had like, it was all sequins. It's pretty lady too. And the leather fringe and her hair, like in like a kind of 60s, 70s sleek profile.

Yeah, yeah, very of her era, right? Yeah, uh-huh. Sashine Littlefeather rose to infamy after rejecting the 1973 Best Actor Academy Award on behalf of Marlon Brando for reasons to do with representations of Indigenous people in film as well as an ongoing protest at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, both of which we'll discuss during the course of the episode. She would go on to be an activist around Native American causes for the rest of her life.

Let's dispense with the sting in the tail. After her death in 2022, the San Francisco Chronicle published an article alleging that her claims to indigenous identity are entirely fabricated. Oh. Yeah. That is always such a sticky... It's such a sticky situation because the whole process of authenticating native identity is invented and perpetuated and held aloft by oppressors. And yet in the way that our society works with identity, an authentic identity is deemed

very important. And so how you navigate those... Those processes of like who authenticate, who has the right to authenticate, whose identity, who has the right to self-identify about what, etc. It's sticky. In this episode, I will be looking not only at this infamous incident in award show history, but I'll be looking at the life of Sashine Littlefeather, aka Maria Louise Cruz, the realities of her claims to Indigenous heritage, and the phenomenon of so-called pretendians, non-Indigenous people who claim Indigenous identity to benefit themselves.

Alright, Doug. Whoa. We have much to discuss. Some preambles. You know I love my preambles. We love to set the table. And I'm gonna be setting theambles. We love to set the table. I'm going to be setting the table for setting the table and setting the table. I hope you love utensils. If you think this subject matter might be upsetting to you, feel free to sit this one out. Yeah.

Even as a non-Indigenous person, I found myself getting frustrated and even angry at some of the stories offered by bad actors pretending to be Indigenous. Bad actors? Yeah, well, bad actors and bad actors, right? And the ways they subverted systems meant to redress historic and ongoing injustices against indigenous people. Terminology. Different places use different terminologies

for their indigenous populations. In the United States, you might hear Native American. In Canada, you'll hear talk of First Nations in Uint-Maiti. I'm gonna be using indigenous primarily as an umbrella term to describe the many diverse cultures under discussion. One term that also comes up often in the piece to my chagrin and with my apologies is the word Indian. This is a word with a long history and a lot of baggage when it comes to the indigenous people of the Americas. It's also one that's still in common use in various government capacities and among certain It's also one that's still in common use in various government capacities and among certain members of relevant communities, and certainly one that was in wide use in the early 1970s

when this story takes place. Understood, yeah. In terms of myself, I'm not Indigenous. I have European family background from Spain, Italy, and Slovenia. I was born and raised in British Columbia, Canada, so settler name, settler name. So my terminology and my approach to Indigenous stories may reflect that I was educated and socialized in that context. In crafting this story, my key objective was to speak honestly while being respectful and doing as little harm as possible. When we tell the

stories of Sashine Littlefeather and other similar folks in fine detail, it can have the unfortunate impact of depriving Indigenous people of significant moments, community heroes, and important legacies, or at the very least, radically altering the context of those moments. As much as possible, I've consulted a variety of sources created with the participation of Indigenous communities and community members, including documentaries, reports, and podcasts, with an eye to both the facts reported in those sources as well as the reception of those sources amongst Indigenous communities and what they felt could have been done better. I will as always name those sources in the end credits. Before we get back to Sashim,

I'm gonna take a winding path through a few other relevant subjects with my immense gratitude for your patience. I love all the utensils and now I want the plates and the cups. I want a large cup too. Oh yes, there's a mug. We're coming in with mugs shortly. It's gonna be great. A mug? A wine glass? Champagne glass? Tea cup? I'm ready. Indigenous identity is a big spectrum whose precise parameters have long been debated within community. As Santee Dakota poet John Trudell points out in an interview for the documentary Real Injun about the depiction of Indigenous people in cinema, the categories of Native American and Indian never existed before the arrival of European settlers put Indigenous

people in a position to defend those identities. Totally. In reality, what we call Indigenous people, or whatever umbrella term you want to use, comprise a variety of unique cultures with different characteristics that sometimes overlap and often don't. There have been many attempts by government bodies to quantify indigeneity through things like In Canada, the Indian Act, and status cards, which typically end up creating more confusion by applying a colonial lens to what it means to be indigenous. Some people invoke blood quantum or the literal amount of Indigenous blood in your veins, also troubling for a few reasons, enforces a rigid mathematical approach to a nuanced discussion. Some Indigenous communities have processes of adoption by which

people who are not technically of genetic Indigenous lineage are able to join the community as fully participatory, respected, and claimed members. And it's also true that when we're discussing Indigenous identity, my understanding based on the sources from this episode is that it tends to come with an embedded sense of responsibility to that particular community. It's not enough just to claim affiliation with a particular tribe or nation. Is there someone recognized within the community who knows you? Are you completing your own obligations, moral or legal, to that tribe or nation? Yeah, are you an active participant? Yes, it's any like any community. Yes, you're not active. Then are you are you really involved? Yes

Are you yeah, you really in community? Yeah And so those are these are important things that are let's say non genetic when it comes to members of a community Recognizing your claim to draw it back to like the example I gave earlier if I said Oh, I'm my background is I have family members from Spain, Italy, Slovenia. If I were to say in that context, oh, I'm Slovenian, I claim affiliation with being Slovenian, it wouldn't be enough that my grandma was Slovenian,

does anyone in Slovenia know me? No. Well, do I speak the language? No. Am I sending money back to Slovenia to help them make a community center? No. So what is my affiliation with Slovenia other help them make a community center? No. So like, what is my affiliation with Slovenia other than my grandmother happened to be born

there, right? Which is something. I feel like I've seen this happen a lot in like the North American context. It's like, oh, I didn't realize that that was a Selenian tradition that we do when we blah, blah, blah. You know, or like, it kind of, there is a way that assimilation can kind of like mask a few things that we didn't even realize. And that assimilation happened well before we ever got to the table. For sure, and family histories and legacies and traditions are

murky and hard to trace, and that's even before you have to like fight against a history of colonialism and its attempts to destroy Indigenous communities through the division of families. So one of many such examples in Canadian history of this attempt to divide indigenous families comes in the form of the 60s scoop, during which from the 1950s to the 1980s, so a more expansive amount of time than its name indicates, indigenous children were taken from their parents

by the government to be fostered and adopted by non-indigenous families. Children in this position often found themselves sever taken from their parents by the government to be fostered and adopted by non-indigenous families. Yeah. Children in this position often found themselves severed from their communities and attempting to reconstruct those ties in adulthood with little information at their disposal. It- I want to be like crystal crystal crystal clear about this. It will not be my attempt in this episode to litigate the particulars of what constitutes Indigenous identity. Totally. I am nowhere near qualified nor is it my place. What I can do is look at the individual claims that the relevant people in this story, particularly

Sashin Littlefeather, make and see whether they correspond with reality or not based on evidence and other people's commentary. To wander briefly away from Sashin again, it's one thing to speak of broad family stories alluding to tribal affiliation, it's another to explicitly state that you are, for example, an indigenous child who was uprooted in the 60s scoop and resettled with an adopted family when you are, verifiably, a white child of Italian-American ancestry born and raised in Stoneham, Massachusetts. This, according to CBC's The Fifth Estate, is the case with Canadian music icon Buffy St. Marie. Right. Who has been held since the 1960s as the foremost indigenous icon in pop music.

Before this episode, I would have said the most famous indigenous Canadian currently living. Oh wow, okay. Super su- to me, anyway, super super famous, super like, she has a stamp. Fair, okay. She has a stamp. Yeah, when you put it that way. The CBC used to like, when they were doing like Canada Trivia Hour, which is totally a thing that the CBC did, like Buffy St. Marie would host it and she'd be like, get the kids together, it's time for Canada Trivia.

like Buffy St. Marie would host it and she'd be like, get the kids together, it's time for Canada trivia. The episode of the Fifth Estate included participation from the Dakota journalist Jacqueline Keeler, who is excited to show her child a documentary about a beloved indigenous heroine artist. PBS had just done a Buffy St. Marie documentary and Jacqueline Keeler wanted to show her kid and she saw in this story

that Buffy St. Marie was telling a lot of inexplicable gaps or things that kind of didn't add up or make sense and she then through her own research was even more crestfallen to find an easily accessed birth certificate for Beverly Jean Santa Maria not indigenous and in fact not even Canadian by birth. Beverly? Beverly Jean Santa Maria, not Indigenous and in fact not even Canadian by birth. Beverly? Beverly Jean. Beverly Jean. The Fifth Estate episode also featured interviews from Buffy's estranged white family members claiming confusion about her claims to Indigenous heritage, as well as documents indicating that

the family members had challenged her claims throughout her long career. Oh my god, I had never heard of this. I mean, I think Buffy St. Marie doesn't, like, clock on my radar maybe as much as a Canadian radar, but- How about this? Love lift us up where we belong. She wrote that. Oh, say I didn't know that she wrote that.

Oh, yeah. Partially, she co-wrote that. Damn. Whoa. Yeah. Partially she co-wrote that. Damn. Okay. This documentary was a massive shock, especially to indigenous Canadians. As a non-indigenous Canadian, it rocked my shit. You could have told me that the Pope wasn't Catholic before you told me that Buffy St. Marie

wasn't First Nations. I was like, what the fuck? And that was the scope of her profile as a national and even international icon. For example, Buffy had been on Sesame Street in the 1970s with your girl the Wicked Witch. Uh-huh. Margaret Hamilton. Yeah, educating the audience about indigenous culture. She was many children's first encounter with someone of indigenous background and certainly

many indigenous children's example of someone like themselves on screen in a non-stereotyped role. Right, yeah, yeah. She's won a lot of awards year marked for indigenous artists. In 1973, she was noted as the first indigenous person to win an Oscar for her work co-writing Up Where We Belong from An Officer and a Gentleman. Oh no. The reveal, she received the Order of Canada, that's our most prestigious civilian honour. Yeah.

The reveal that she'd been lying her whole life about these evidently, allegedly lying her whole life about these key components of her identity resulted in a lot of trauma, including from indigenous community members who felt the CBC had been delinquent in its duty of care by releasing the information in such a shocking and upsetting way.

Oh, wow. Wow. That's how like deep set this goes. It's like, don't rock my world like that. Dude. You have a responsibility to tell me the truth. Buffy was very beloved. Good lord. And it's also true to loop back to our earlier discussion of the complex things that constitute indigenous identity, and again that's not what we're here to arbitrate, that Buffy St. Marie was formally adopted as an adult by Chief Amal Piapot and Clara Starblanket of the Piapot Cree First Nation. In terms of this community,

this traditional adoption process carries serious importance. It makes her a bona fide member of Piapot First Nation. When the fifth estate episode came out, Deborah and Natanas Piapot of the Piapot family released a written statement claiming Buffy in no uncertain terms quote, Buffy is our family we chose her and she chose us we claim her as a member of our family and all of our family members are from the Piapot First Nation. To us that holds far more weight than any paper documentation or colonial record-keeping ever could. It is up to us to determine who is a member of

our community and our family. Every understanding of our spiritual practices, the history our grandparents shared with us, and the traditions of the Cree refute your suggestion that our Auntie Buffy is not indigenous or a member of our community. Yeah, can't argue with that. No, fair enough. I feel a lot of empathy for the Piapot family and for other folks in this Cree First Nation as they struggle with a pretty big public shock that they have to deal with in the public eye, which is never any fun. And when we come back to the question

of being in good standing with community and fulfilling your obligations, Buffy devoted her entire career to celebrating indigenous culture and raising awareness of indigenous issues. She helped fund the Native American occupation of Alcatraz in the 1970s, which was one of the key protests of the American Indian movement, late 60s, early 70s I should say. Mm-hmm, the AIM. The AIM. And she has demonstrably done

many great works for community and for the Cree culture, she claims. But again, it may be helpful to move our discussion away from the broader picture of what it means to be indigenous and refocus on the individual claims that Buffy makes which seem, based on the available evidence, to be conscious lies. Although it is of course important to note that Buffy denies these allegations and calls them deeply hurtful. Messy. Messy.

Really messy. So, why? Why bother to fabricate an identity of this kind? Why specifically fabricate an Indigenous identity? Is it deception or delusion? Does she believe what she's saying? Haven't we taken enough from these people? Well, Josie, this phenomenon is actually incredibly common, so much so that it recently got its

own name, the Pretendian, the non-Indigenous person who claims Indigenous ancestry. Yeah. Yeah. For some folks, it's a matter of misguided family stories taking on new lives. There's a long history of white folks claiming a mythical Indigenous family member far back in their lineage without evidence. Yeah. This archetype has a name of her own, the Cherokee Princess. Perhaps a counterpart to Josie's friend the Nigerian prince in that the Cherokee do not and never have had princesses.

Right, yeah, yeah. In any capacity. Nor particularly a hierarchy that would allow for misinterpretation of such things. Right, yeah, it's not lost in translation. No, no. Does not exist. This is a bizarrely common trope when it comes to fabricated indigenous identity.

I personally, Mimi Taylor, have known at least two people whose family ancestors included this Cherokee princess. Ah. One who seemed to believe it when he was telling me about it at a party, and another who had disproven a long-held family lie through 23andMe. Ohhhh, very interesting.

Why is the Cherokee princess so prolific and why is she so commonly Cherokee as opposed to any other Indigenous community? I understand that it is complicated because a lot of those, you know, let's take them by their word, those women existed, but maybe they had to assimilate. Maybe they feared for their children's lives. And they didn't want to be known as native or indigenous. They wanted to pass because there was actual fear of what their lives or what their lineage would suffer

if they were read as such. So there is like lost history there. Absolutely. And I don't, and I want to clarify too that I don't mean to imply that anybody who is seeking to reconnect with lost Indigenous roots or lost Cherokee roots is lying and is a pretender. That is very much a real thing because as we've talked about, if there's colonial mechanisms in place to mash up families, things like that are inevitable. And in fact, the intended effects of a genocidal system that seeks to snuff out cultures, right? So totally, yeah. It happens,

but there is something to be said about the fact that one in every four person, people claiming this Cherokee, the same Cherokee princess seems like a lot, how many kids did this woman have? Is she okay? Right, yeah. There's a reason for it it it seems, or at least there's, I managed to spot a couple of theories that rang true to me in sort of someone explaining this. To start with, traditional Cherokee territory roughly occupies Appalachia, easing into the American South. A lot of white Southerners apocryphally started to claim Cherokee heritage as like a trendy thing around the 1840s and 50s right around the time of the Civil War. Why? It gave them

a tie back to the land to make them more American than the northerners. And if you're descended from a princess, that makes you royalty and that gives you birthright. Ah, okay, yeah. So in a time of rebellion, also the Cherokee were recast as fighters against federal tyranny. They liked that aspect of the Cherokee lore all of a sudden, especially as the Cherokee aligned with the Confederacy during the Civil War. There we go, okay. And it might also be noteworthy that if a mixed-race child of dark complexion were to emerge in the Confederate South It might be for the best if that child were explained as half Cherokee as opposed to half something else

So those family legends passed down through many many years proved durable and all of a sudden you've got folks like our girl Elizabeth Warren among many others, issuing apologies to the Cherokee Nation because the DNA test didn't match Grandma's stories. Right. Yes. Yes. Perhaps for that reason, unrecognized groups claiming to be Cherokee Nations have a bad habit of popping up in the American South, necessitating intervention by the three recognized Cherokee groups, the Cherokee Nation and United Katooa Band of Cherokee in Oklahoma and the Eastern Band of Cherokee in North Carolina. In 2010, the combined population of those three groups that I just said amounted to fewer than 400,000. By contrast, the amount of people that self-identified as Cherokee in the 2010 American federal census was 819,000.

Woah. So double. More than double. Woah, yeah. Oh man, that is fascinating. That is really intense. Why do some non-Indigenous people seem to clamor for Indigenous identity? Theoretically, here are a few possible animating reasons. First, Josie, as you and I know, whiteness is cursed with blandness by its nature. We want you to be homogenous and colonial and to dress like us and worship our god and we'll beat it at you if you don't. A distant Indigenous ancestor gives your white bread lineage an exotic touch and perhaps accessing your stereotyped idea of the noble savage gives an outlet for the part of you that feels aggrieved and drained by the shitty European colonial lifestyle, and seeks a more profound cultural

and community connection. Quoting Algonquin and Anishinaabe writer Lynn Gale, when all you're doing is singing O' Canada, eventually that doesn't sustain you. Well put! Yes! Spot on! Oh, Canada cannot feed you, my friend! No, it's not that good a song.

There's not that much there when you really really get down to it. Maybe it gives you something to do with that white guilt now that you're on the wrong side of history. Maybe it's a way to explain the presence of other non-white family members with even greater stigma attached to their identities, as we said. A half-black child in the 1800s might better have been explained away as part Cherokee. Similarly, people from those groups might themselves find it easier to pass as Indigenous, or may themselves have complicated family genealogies or inaccurate histories and family legends. While this deception may be practiced unconsciously based on poorly researched family stories, we're also in an era of genealogy, so now many people are finding

out that one of their 64 great great great great great grandparents was indigenous and really taking that to the bank and spare thought for those other 63 ignored gg gg ggps in their own cultures and histories. Right, yeah. And I say taking it to the bank because there are also less theoretical and more tangible benefits for this kind of deception. Let's take the example of arts and academia in Canada and I choose this specific sphere for a brief but hopefully enlightening detour because according to Métis scholar Jean Taillé, pretendianism, or what she calls indigenous identity fraud, is rampant to the tune of a possible 25% of self-reported claims to indigenous identity being fabricated. Woah.

Yeah. Woah. identity being fabricated. Whoa. Yeah. In fact, Taye prepared a report for the University of Saskatchewan in response to the revelation that one of its leading public health scholars, Carrie Barassa, had fabricated her indigenous identity. She's not the only one. Oh yeah, she's not the only one. A huge number of Canadian academics and artists with national profiles have been revealed for similar trespasses. This is because in these worlds there are benefits to being Indigenous in the form of awards, grants, bursaries, and publicity that is only available to artists of Indigenous ancestry."

Oh. It goes like this. These spaces often—and again, I'm speaking specifically in a Canadian context here—these spaces, often left-leaning and eager to implement Indigenization processes like those named in the Truth and Reconciliation Committee's calls to action, either carve out funds for such or are entrusted them by the government. The largely colonial bodies that administer these awards, ignorant of how to verify people's claims

of indigenous identity and fearful of creating offense or causing trauma because like you say, it's not the right solution to start invasively hunting down everyone's claim to indigenous identity. That's a horrible and traumatizing thing as well, right? Yeah. So they accept self-identified candidates at their words. These candidates then become embedded in adjudicatory roles as Indigenous representatives, which obviously perpetuates the cycle, as people who are not themselves Indigenous are responsible for handing out

awards and bursaries and faculty possessions meant for Indigenous applicants. Some of these Indigenous connections are so tenuous that they include academics from First Nations that only exist as Facebook pages. Oh, squeeze me? Yeah. Oh! Canadian academics publicly pretending indigeneity for personal and professional gain, it should be noted, is not necessarily a phenomenon of the Facebook age. In the 1930s, an English-Canadian professor

named Archibald Stansfeld Blaney underwent a transformation into Grey Owl, the acclaimed and famous Apache botanist and conservationist whose deception was only exposed after his death. So we're starting to get the sense that this is a bigger problem than we thought, right? Like, bigger than one or two oddballs. Yeah. Yeah. Indigenous identity fraud of course doesn't just exist in academia. If you've ever been to British Columbia, you'll have seen some of the beautiful art created

by the indigenous groups of the West Coast. It's everywhere from our public spaces to our gift shops. Tourists spend over a billion dollars a year on Indigenous art in places like Vancouver's Gastown, where, according to investigative journalist Francesca Fionda of Discourse Magazine, 75% of stores contain inauthentic Indigenous art. I have been in some of those stores and looked at some of that stuff and that totally checks out, yeah. Yeah.

Yup. But if you don't have that same ability to discern if you're just some random who came in from somewhere, right? No, that's very true. And it doesn't have to be art, you might equally fabricate indigenous identity to gain access to expanded hunting and fishing rights or cheap gas or at the station at the rez or whatever it is. In her report to the University of Saskatchewan, Jean Thier, building upon work by Canada research chair Kim Talber, who's a member of the Sisseton Wapitan Oyate, offers the red flags that she often spots among stories of indigenous identity fraud. It's very important to note that these are not themselves evidence that a person is not indigenous,

and are offered in the context of things that would prompt further conversation if you're responsible for accepting an identity claim in a formal context, does the person's claim to their identity change conspicuously over time in ways that aren't explainable? With Buffy, we saw her claim Migma and Algonquin identity before settling on Cree. Right, yeah. In some articles, she says she met her birth mother, in others she never had, and yet others the mother died during childbirth. Do their stories conflict with other known information? Down in Washington State, Lewis Anthony Rath was a purported artist of authentic Apache totem poles,

the Apache don't carve totem poles. There's the tale right there. That was a quick and easy one to tell. Does the evidence they offer to support their identity hold water? Canadian writer Joseph Boyden found himself in some hot water about his own claims to indigeneity. He offered as evidence a card from the Ontario Woodlands Métis tribe, a member organization, not a First Nation. We spoke a bit earlier about unaffiliated Cherokee organizations in the American South being willing to offer supportive identity. Does the territory they claim to be from match where that group actually resides? Are they being vague? Is the way they introduce themselves consistent with the conventions of the community they claim to be from, match where that group actually resides, are they being vague, is the way they introduce themselves consistent with the conventions of the

community they claim, and again, to stress, stress stress stress, this is not to say that you should go out and challenge and doubt people's claims to indigenous identity. In fact, let me say now, absolutely do not do that! Yeah. A big part of why I offer this information is because these red flags that I just named A big part of why I offer this information is because these red flags that I just named seem to have a lot of shared foundation with the ones that Jacqueline Keeler used to compile the alleged pretendians list. And so Jacqueline Keeler, if you remember the name I mentioned her earlier, she's the woman who- She was in the fifth estate thing, right? Yes, exactly.

She was watching the Buffy St. Marie documentary with her child and said, wait a minute, this doesn't jive right with me, and looked into the birth certificate. So the alleged pretendians list is a very long list of folks whose public claims to indigenous ancestry raised those flags we were just discussing. It's specifically about people who are using their claims to indigeneity to advance in a professional context. It includes a lot of names that you would recognize, both those whose claims have been debunked and those who are still widely held as icons. This is a controversial list, even within the larger Indigenous community. I saw some folks speak

of it with unambiguous praise, others as a necessary evil. I saw people claiming that the list is an invasion of privacy, a hit list, a personal vendetta, inaccurate, that the harm caused by naming someone incorrectly as a fraudster is not worth a million pretendings correctly named, or that they themselves were incorrectly named as fraudsters by the list. Right. I won't attempt to litigate these opinions

or verify the accuracy of individual accusations on the list, except to say that correctly or incorrectly naming a fraudster comes with harms as we've observed. Such was the case with the alleged pretendings lists first big public accusation, Sashine Littlefeather. And we're back. I'm gonna tell you a version of Sashine Littlefeather's life and times that primarily incorporates two sources. The first is the 2019 short documentary Sashine Breaking the Silence. The first is the 2019 short documentary Sashine Breaking the Silence. The half hour long piece is largely an oral

history of Sashine's life focusing specifically on the Academy Awards incident told by the woman herself. It finds Sashine in her 70s battling the stage 4 cancer that would eventually kill her in 2022. It is a reverent portrait of a trailblazer. Do you know who made it? The website is One Bowl Productions. The second source is a San Francisco Chronicle article written by Jacqueline Keeler, the person we've been talking about, right? Yeah. Which claims based on genealogy research that she conducted and interviews with Sashin's biological sisters Trudy Orlandi and Rosalind Cruz that Sashine's claims to indigenous ancestry are just that, nothing more than claims.

There's always a relative in these stories who's... Yeah. ...confused. And typically pretty upset. Yeah. I should say that the evidence Keillor presents in the article is circumstantial, a lot of the claims made have been disputed, and a lot of Keeler's views and methods have made her controversial in general as a journalist and a scholar.

Particularly, she gets a lot of criticism for some of the stuff that we've been talking about, about her methods replicating colonial harms around the seeking of indigenous identity, as well as criticism around the completeness of her genealogical research. It's also true that a lot of this is Sashin's word against her sister's, so take that into consideration as well. What we can do is put it up next to something like the Sashin documentary, and by comparing these two irreconcilable sources, perhaps we can come close to something like a conclusion. Sashin Littlefeather says that she was born Maria Louise Cruz in Salinas, California to

parents of mixed ethnicities. I should add that I saw both the names Marie with an E and Maria with an A as Sashin's birth name. Mom was a leather stamper who trained in Phoenix. She met my dad there. He was White Mount Napache and Yaqui. In a different quote she says, their marriage was illegal in the state of Arizona, so they moved to Salinas.

My mother endured a very abusive relationship with my father. I grew up in a harsh environment. Sashin specifically, as you heard, claims White Mountain Apache and Yaqui ancestry. Keeler claims that her research indicates that Sashin only began to claim Yaqui ancestry relatively recently and that her public claims to Apache ancestry start in the 1960s at the beginning of a young modeling career. While there wasn't any statement from any of the Apache groups that I could find, the Pasqua Yaqui tribe in Arizona said that Sashin was not an enrolled member of the tribe and neither were her parents. Quote, However, that does not mean that we could independently confirm that she is not of Yaqui ancestry generally from Mexico or the southwestern

United States Sashin says that at the age of three she was taken from mentally ill parents and placed in foster care with her white grandparents on December 6th 1974 the Berkeley Gazette quoted Little Feather calling herself quote an urban Indian urban Indian. Never saw a reservation until I was 17, she said. I lived in a shack in Salinas Cal. I remember the day we got a toilet and I brought the neighborhood kids in and gave them a tour. Okay. She claims that later in her life, quote, my father abused me psychologically, emotionally,

mentally and physically and it tortured my mind so much so that I had a complete nervous breakdown and I was hospitalized for one year of my young life. According to Sashin's sister Trudy, quote, It's a lie. My father's family came from Mexico. My dad was born in Oxnard. Sister Roslyn adds, It is a fraud. It's disgusting to the heritage of the tribal people, and it's just insulting to my parents. Little Feather sisters both claim no known Native American ancestry. They identify as Spanish on their father's side. Yeah. I mean, you're not going to be a Mexican American princess, said Trudy. You're going to be an American Indian princess. It was more prestigious to be an American

Indian than it was to be Hispanic in her mind. They say Rosalind and Trudy say that their father was not an abusive alcoholic. Quoting Rosalyn, My father was deaf and he'd lost his hearing at nine 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, Sashin, took what happened to him. In a separate interview, Orlando says, my dad never drank, my dad never smoked, and you know, she also blasted him

and said my father was mentally ill. My father was not mentally ill. She also says as to Sashim's claims of being fostered by their grandparents, their house was right next door. It was just like walking out the door to your neighbor's house. As for that shack they supposedly lived in

with no toilet, Trudy responds, that infuriates me. Our house had a toilet. And it's not a shack, okay? I have pictures of it. Of course we had a toilet. That would piss me off too. Me too. And if I had a photo of the toilet, I would be like, no, objection. I've got a picture of the toilet. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, herself claims that during the American Indian movement's 18-month occupation of Alcatraz, the name Sashin, meaning little bear, was given to her by a member of the Navajo Nation. Jacqueline Keeler, herself Navajo, says both that this isn't correct in the Navajo language and that it's not a Navajo convention to name yourself after an animal. Shoshone activist Lineta Warjack, who was at the Alcatraz occupation for all 18 months,

says that Little Feather was never present on Alcatraz. Uh-huh. It's a small island, y'all. Yeah, it's like word gets around these tight little walls. Yeah. There's only so many people to talk to. And, uh, sisters Roslyn and Trudy say that the name was more likely derived from the Sashine brand ribbons they used for their clothes in 4H Club. Oooh, 4H Club.

So that's her usual suspects moment with that. Yeah, yeah. About four months before her infamous Oscars experience, Sashine does a spread for Playboy magazine under the title Ten Little Indians. Oh. Journalist Herb Kane wrote in the Chronicle, with apologies for much of the language ahead, quote, Sachin Littlefeather the Bay Area Indian Princess and nine other tribal beauties

are sore at Hugh Hefner. Playboy ordered pictures of them riding horseback nude and woodside and other beauty spots and then Hefner rejected the shots by Mark Frazier and Mike Cornaffle as not erotic enough. Why do them in the first place? Well, explained Littlefeather, everybody says black is beautiful. We wanted to show that red is too. Oh nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Splash, how does said Splash come about? Sashin, through her acquaintanceship with Francis Ford Coppola, sends a letter to Marlon Brando, everyone's favourite eccentric bisexual hottie, well into his Vegas Elvis era. I found conflicting information, including from Sashin herself, as to how she was initially acquainted with both Coppola and Brando, but she does seem to have known them. Okay, okay, that is a truth.

Anyway, Sashin is interested in engaging Brando's sympathy toward the American Indian movement. According to Sashin, Brando finally called her a year later. Brando has decided that if he happens to win the 1973 Best Actor award for his role as Don Corleone in The Godfather, spoilers he does as held as one of the greatest roles in one of the greatest films of all time. Blah blah blah. Yes, yes. Blah blah blah.

I refuse. He will use- He starts with the oranges to shot me. Um. Damn Taylor, you're better and better every year. He will use the moment to decline the award in order to bring awareness to a pair of issues relevant to Native Americans, the then ongoing standoff at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, and the general depiction of Native Americans in film up to that point. So Josie! Josie- Okay.

Thomas- If we didn't already have enough on our plate, let's unpack both those things. Josie- Okay. Yes, please. Thomas- Depictions of Indigenous people are inextricable from the beginnings of cinema. Josie- Yeah, they are. Thomas- Truly. The very first moving images shown by Thomas Edison on his Penny Kinetoscope in the late 1800s were images of Laguna Pueblo ceremonies and

dances. As the film industry matures and, or I guess not even matures, but is in its nascent stages, the Seventh Cavalry opens fire on the last free community of Native Americans killing 300 Lakota people in a massacre at the Pinewoods Reservation at Wounded Neaf. The Native American, seen as a vanishing and almost mythical figure, takes on an era of tragedy in the public imagination, and images of Indigenous people become prolific in the era of silent films with over 100 such film depictions. A popular character in the silent film era is the heroic noble Indian, with such characters

being viewed sympathetically as protagonists. One film lauded for its authenticity, 1930's The Silent Enemy, dramatizes a famine experienced by the Ojibwe tribe using a cast composed of genuine indigenous actors. The cast included a preeminent and celebrated indigenous actor of the day, Chief Buffalo Child Longlance. It emerged that Longlance had altered, embellished, or fabricated his claims to Indigenous identity. And this, coupled with the revelation that he had black ancestry, was a great scandal to the film studio at the time.

As we move into the 1930s, sympathetic depictions of Native Americans stop pulling in money. And since everything is negotiable for a profit, we get the Western. And specifically, we get the 1939 John Ford flick Stagecoach starring John Wayne, the template of the next two decades in film. The swaggering blue-eyed American cowboy beset by violent Indians, backward savages speaking in halting English and standing between the Duke and manifest destiny. Yep. The film Indians of this era universally rocked feather bonnets and were expert horsemen and archers. All indigenous people were depicted with roughly the characteristics of the Plains peoples, although with some creative amendments made, for example, the Plains Indians

don't traditionally wear headbands in real life. That's a movie invention because that way when the stuntman falls off the horse, their wig doesn't come off. No fucking way. Yup. That's why. As to who could play Native American in the movies, anyone from Elvis Presley to Charles Bronson to Boris Karloff was on the table.

Note that these are all men, Indigenous women tended to be absent from these films other than as comely Indian princesses. Right, yeah. The biggest name and Native American actors from this era was Iron Eyes Cody, who appeared in over 200 films. Despite that, he might best be known as the dude who cries when the white lady throws her litter out the car window in a very famous American public service advertisement. Yeah, that was the 70s though, right? Yes, yes. Yeah, the single tier. Ironized Cody was actually Espera Oscar

di Corti, an Italian American man, although one with a Native American wife and two adopted indigenous sons who stand by him. Film historian Angela Elias, who met Cody, said that Cody, quote, believed it, lived it, and breathed it, and the older he got, the more he believed it. Okay. So whatever it started as, by the end it seems like he really fully believed it, that he was indigenous in whatever way. Yeah. By the 60s, indigenous people are increasingly seen as trendy and commodified by the burgeoning hippie and new age cultures. Yeah. In film, they're increasingly used as allegorical tools for all oppressed groups and allowed to be seen as more sympathetic and nuanced figures. Meanwhile, in real life, the burgeoning American Indian movement, AIM

is doing things like occupying federal land. Alcatraz. Alcatraz. And then in 1973, at Wounded Knee, very symbolically rich location for very obvious reasons, where they're having a standoff with US Marshals and the FBI, including tanks and weapons and Molotov cocktails and all kinds of intense military and paramilitary shit to which Brando and Sashin Littlefeather are now attempting to draw attention and we're back Okay, yes Think that's our last detour. I think we might it might be like a straight shot to the finish from here. Oh On March 27th 1973 Brando gives Sashin typewritten 8 pages, 2 damn long. I know!

And Sashin puts on what she purports to be a traditional style beaded buckskin dress. The sequins were nice. They were nice. She looks a treat. She looks beautiful. And it's off to... I can't speak to how authentic she is or isn't, but she looks beautiful. And it's off to the Academy

Awards. Now much of what I'm going to be recounting to you about this evening comes from oral histories in which Sashin is the primary source. Gotcha. Take what you like from this table. The sequence. I like the sequence. Yes, she's a beautiful face. Sashin says that Howard Koch, the Academy Award producer, took the speech away from her and only returned it when she promised that she would keep her remarks under 60 seconds to avoid being arrested. So there is the threat of arrest lingering in the air according to Sashin. And like, I have to say, the broad strokes of this don't necessarily, like that could happen. Sure. Yeah, yeah, that feels real. Overbearing patriarchal white dude trying to push around a young woman to closure, that happens every day, even still, right?

Sure. Yeah. Sashin goes up and gives a truncated version of Brando's speech, and I have to say, having heard the full speech, the Academy Awards ends up revisiting its relationship with her, and she records a version of her sitting down and reading the full text of the speech. Oh, wow, okay.

And I have to say, having heard that version, she hits all the major points for a synthesis that she had to come up with on the fly. It's pretty good. Yeah. It communicates the letter and the spirit of things pretty well. Yeah. And she keeps her composure admirably, even under unease from the crowd. Yeah, the booing.

Yeah, the booing. That must have been, and you know, she does have a lot of composure and dignity given the circumstances, right? It's one of those hard situations where like, I do really agree with the statement and the message Yeah, right. Yeah, but but who could have been up there giving that message, right? So it's tough Exactly again, if you accept the claims against Sashin Yeah One of the great legends around this moment that you will see repeated in every telling in fact when I mentioned this story to Mitchell

Because I wanted to make sure if you ended up doing an award show when I didn't want to step on your toes, so we crossed our friends with Mitchell, the middleman, it was the first thing he mentioned to me. There's this legend that John Wayne was there and he was allegedly so incensed by Sashin and her temerity that it took six security guards to stop him storming the sage and clocking Sashin. Oh my god. Yeah, well, this is- you gotta remember Joe Pesci was like, Ah, that Sinead O'Connor I would have punched in the mouth. This is the thing, right?

God forbid a woman talk about politics in front of a room full of white people. Just never goes well. But like, it's always six too, it's always these six security guards, there's never any various six whole security guards. I can't find anything other than people saying it verbally that confirms this for a fact. I've seen doubters who point out that John Wayne was on the stage later that night presenting and sucking wind because he was recovering from cancer surgery and they took out part of his lung. It seems like an embellishment that makes for a good story as much of Sashin's self-reported

personal history seems to be, but if it makes you happy to imagine, go for it. We're all just making films in our minds here. Yeah. After the event, presenters awkwardly allude to it for the rest of the evening. Before she announces best actress, Raquel Welch says, I hope the winner doesn't have a cause. Oh, Raquel. Can I tell you something else about Raquel Welch? She shot my mother in the head in a dream that my mother had one time.

Bitch. Can't trust her. Whoa. Yeah. Fuck you, Raquel. Two strikes, you're out. When Clint Eastwood began presenting the Best Picture award, he said, I don't know if I should present this award on behalf of all the cowboys shot in all the John Ford Westerns over the years.

Oh my god. Oh, brother. After the event, Sashin presents the complete text of Brando's speech to the press room. She then returns to Brando's house, who commends her on a job well done. Later, on the Dick Cavett show, Brando clarified his aims with the protestors' follows. Since the American Indian hasn't been able to have his voice heard anywhere in the history of the United States, I felt that it was a marvelous opportunity for an Indian to be able to voice his opinion to 85 million people. His.

It's old grammar. I just re-read a- yeah, I hate- I know, but it was a specific woman. You know, give her, whatever. Anyway, I felt that he had a right to in view of what Hollywood has done to him. He goes on to support Sashin for her grace in light of the heckling audience and says, They didn't want her there. They didn't want the evening interrupted with that particular note, and from their insular point of view, I felt that perhaps they had a point. But I don't think that people generally realize what the motion picture industry has done to the Indian.

As a matter of fact, all ethnic groups, all minorities, all non-whites, people just simply don't realize. They took for granted that that's the way people are going to be presented, that these cliches were just going to be perpetuated. And people don't realize how deeply these people are injured by seeing themselves represented, not so much the adults, because they're already inured to that kind of pain and pressure, but children. Indian children seeing Indians represented as savage, as ugly, as nasty, vicious, treacherous, drunken. They grow up only with a negative image of themselves, and it lasts a lifetime." Representation matters, Marlene.

Which is- which damn, Marlene, I didn't know they were spittin' that kind of fire back in the 70s. Shit. Yeah. This and a long time afterwards were times where, like, you only existed in stereotyped roles if you were anything other than a white, heterosexual, cisgender, blah blah blah actor, right? The norm. Yeah. That's very true. In the ensuing week, Sashin is besieged by death threats and claims that she's just some Mexican actress, which she fervently denies and calls racist. Uh huh. Sashin feels that Brando kinda left her to take the heat during this time.

She seems to have been blacklisted from working in Hollywood after that, or, as Sashin likes to put it, redlisted. As for what the speech does, it does seem to be a genuine moment of inspiration for those members of the American Indian movement barricaded in at Wounded Knee, which Lakota activist Russell Means expresses to S Sachin in person later. And it does seem to have done some good in terms of refocusing Public Eyes on the standoff, which finally ended May 8th, 1973, with at least three fatalities. I do think in terms of its general goals and outcomes, it was a pretty cool move. Sachin herself seems to have devoted the rest of her life

to working in hospice with AIDS patients, which is, again, truly commendable work if we talk about people living in good relation with community. Yeah. Yeah. In 2004, Marlon Brando dies. An obituary by Roger Ebert mentions the moment at the 1973 Oscars and suggests that Sashin was actually Maria Cruz, a Mexican actress. Sashin and her lawyer issue statements in her defense that contradict one another. Oh, ouch. Two weeks before Sashin's death, the Academy Awards hosts an evening with Sashin Littlefeather,

which includes a conversation with Sashin, a variety of Indigenous performances, and a formal apology for the way she was treated. Academy Award president David Rubin says, The abuse you endured because of this statement was unwarranted and unjustified the emotional burden You have lived through in the cost your own career in our industry are irreparable for too long The courage you showed has been unacknowledged for this we offer both our deepest apologies and our sincere admiration That feels pretty sincere. Yeah, I'll say I mean maybe a little too late But sashin little feather aka Louise Cruz, died October 2nd, 2022, at the age of 75.

If she was, in fact, fabricating aspects of her personal history, she took her reasons with her. Shortly after she died, the Exposé on Her Heritage, quoting Sachin's sisters, was published in the San Francisco Chronicle, reigniting a heated public discussion on the nature of identity and indigeneity, reopening wounds, opening new wounds, sad stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Says Trudy Orlandi, Sachin's sister,

The best way that I could think of summing up my sister is that she created a fantasy. She lived in a fantasy, and she died in a fantasy. Fantasy or not, the moment remains as an inspiration for activists and a watershed moment in the American perception of Indigenous people. I don't think that's entirely good, but I can't say whether it's entirely bad. That's a good way to put it, yeah. But if there's a happy ending here, and I know you moviegoers love a happy ending, it's this.

Indigenous representation in film, one of the central issues Brando and Littlefeather were drawing attention to, has come a long way since 1973. We started to see more nuanced Indigenous characters and reclaimed stereotypes like Muscogee actor Will Sampson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. White filmmakers began to offer more complex depictions of indigeneity in the 90s like Dances with Wolves and then Indigenous made cinema starts to take off in the late 90s and early 2000s with movies like Smoke Signals and The Fast Runner. Nowadays, if you want to watch a Predator prequel set in a Comanche community, you can do that. Prey. If you want to watch a movie entirely in the Haida language, you can do that. Edge

of the Knife. It's a time of plenty in Indigenous cinema from around the world. Not just we've talked about this in the context of the Americas, but certainly New Zealand, Australia, everywhere in the world, right? And long may that continue. I'd go on, but they've been signaling me behind the prompter to wrap it up for about 90 minutes. So that's the story of Sashine Littlefeather and her appearance at the 1973 Academy Awards. When I decided that I was going to do this story, I didn't know that there were accusations that she had fabricated her Indigenous identity.

I was coming into this planning to do something a lot more akin to the 2019 documentary that was like an uplifting portrait of an Indigenous trailblazer. And in researching the story, I realized that the truth was far more complicated than that. It's so hard because it does bring up all these questions of like, what is authentic? Right. And how, yeah, who gets to determine and what is performed, especially as our culture gets more and more inclined maybe towards performance of authenticity? Yeah, no, I get, I get that.

I get what you mean, because I ended this story with a lot of mixed feelings and it wasn't the type of story that I felt like, sometimes you feel really good researching the story. This one was a very frustrating story to research because all the moments where I would conventionally feel joy, it was thwarted. They were kind of undercut and undercut.

Yeah. And undercut, yeah. Yeah, and similarly, like a lot of the angry that I felt was undercut too. I do think that representation is important and I think that like a like a representation that comes from Like a soulful place is important. I guess soulful doesn't really capture it I don't think the lie that someone like Buffy St. Marie, for example, seems to have told

negates the inspiration that say a young indigenous girl saw drew from seeing them on Buffy on Sesame Street and being, feeling represented. Like that joy can still be held as true. Yeah. Even though like, like you say though, what a lovely thing, what a lovely thing for that opportunity to go to somebody that like you say has a bit more soul in the game. Yeah, yeah, and how much further that could have gone or how much... yeah. But I think there is also a feeling that you can get of like, someone's trying to cash in on a trend.

Someone's trying to do this. For sure, well, Brando got accused of a lot of that. Yeah. Like, what do you make, I guess, there's a question, what do you make of Brando's gesture? Cause I think he got a lot of blowback for being perceived to have left her to take his heat in that moment.

Yeah. But it did get like, if the intention was to shift the conversation at least partially to what was happening at Wounded Knee, it did happen. So it was a successful gesture in that way. What do you make of it? Well, to give her the opportunity to speak, I think is important. True. On that huge stage, not just physically.

65 million people, right? Watching, apparently. Yeah. But I do think there's also something to the fact that, like, he had a few Oscars under his belt already, so it's the first one you think you're gonna do. Too funny. He's a respected member of that Hollywood community, and so people were gonna hear what he said in a different way than if he was an up-and-coming star. It's best actor plays, not best supporting actor plays. I think definitely kind of letting her flail in the wind with that is not great. Like, produce a movie and give her a role, you know? Sure, yeah, yeah.

Support. Fair, fair, fair. Sure, sure, sure. So that's my awards show offering. Yeah. That's my plus one. I brought my own story as my date. Cute. I like that.

What do you think this episode would wear to the awards show? Something racist. I don't want to. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Something that it is not entitled to wear would be my guess. us a few bucks via our Ko-fi account at ko-fi.com forward slash bittersweetinthemy. But no pressure, bittersweetinthemy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at bittersweetinthemy, or just pass the podcast

along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet. The article that I pulled for this was from the Denver Post and it's entitled, Today is Belucifer's Birthday but the family of the artist who died creating it would prefer you don't call it that. It was written by John Winslow and published February 11th, 2021. And I also looked at an article from Collider. This Sesame Street episode was banned after receiving complaints. Written by Lloyd Farley, posted March 19th, 2024. My sources for this episode included the documentaries,

Sashin Breaking the Silence by Wumble Productions in 2019, the September 30th, 2022 episode of CBC's The Passionate Eye, The Pretendians, directed and presented by Drew Hayden Taylor of Curved Lake First Nation, the October 27th, 2023 episode of CBC's The Fifth Estate, investigating Buffy St. Marie's claim to Indigenous ancestry, the documentary Real Injun, 2009, directed and presented by Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond. My Sashin information, in addition to the sources already named, came from Sashin Littlefeather was a Native American icon, her sisters say she was an ethnic fraud by Jacqueline Keeler for the San Francisco Chronicle, October 25, 2022.

Column Did John Wayne Try to Assault Sashin Littlefeather at the 1973 Oscars, Debunking Hollywood Myth in the Los Angeles Times by Michael Hiltsick, August 23, 2022. Sashien Littlefeather may have lied about her identity, does that matter? By Anne Brannigan and Kelsey Abels for the Washington Post, November 3, 2022. What Would Sashien Littlefeather Say? Written by Lisa Snell, Native American Times, published October 26, 2010. Oscars Other Scandal. The Academy really doesn't want to talk about Sashine Littlefeather by Martha Ross, March

6th, 2023 for the Mercury News, and I watched a clip of Marlon Brando on the Dick Cavett Show hosted on the Dick Cavett Show's official YouTube account. Marlon Brando on Sashine Littlefeather accepting his Oscar on his behalf. For the information about Buffy St. Marie, I also read the statement from the Pia Pot family, as well as, Oscar winner Buffy St. Marie responds to questions about her native heritage, I Know Who I Am, by Rebecca Sun and The Hollywood Reporter, October 26th, 2023. I read, the supposed unmasking of Buffy St. Marie doesn't bring vindication, only more hurt,

in Indigenous by Eden Finday, November 2nd, 2023, and I also listened to relevant episodes of the CBC podcast's Frontburner and Unreserved. My information on academic fraud came from the report Indigenous Identity Fraud prepared by Jean Taillet for the University of Saskatchewan October 17th, 2022. I read The Curious Case of Gina Adams, a pretendee and investigation by Michelle Cisa for McLean's magazine October 2022, I read Who Bears the Steep Costs of Ethnic Fraud by Amy Fung for Hyperallergic June 2nd 2021. My Cherokee information came from My Great-Great-Grandmother was a Cherokee Princess by Megan Murdoch Krischke on

InterVarsity October 14th 2013. Going Native, Why Are Americans Hijacking Cherokee Identity by Cecil Lee Hillary for VOA News July 23rd, 2018. Non-recognized Cherokee Tribes Flourished by Travis Snow, Assistant Editor of the Cherokee Phoenix January 19th, 2007. And I watched YouTube videos, Why Everyone Has a Cherokee Grandma by NYTN, and No, You Are Not Cherokee, History of the Biggest Myth in Genealogy by Family Tree Nuts History and Genealogy Service. My information on Indigenous folks in film also included APTN Investigates Cowboys and Pretendings by John Murray April 20, 2018 for APTN.

This episode included clips from the 1973 Academy Awards as well as episode 847 of Sesame Street hosted on YouTube by Tiny Dancer. If you want to help support the show, subscribe on coffeeko-fi.com slash bittersweetinfamy. If you become a monthly subscriber, like John Mountain, like Erika Jo, like Queen Elizabeth Lizzie Dee, you will get access to the Bittersweet Film Club. And spoilers ahead, you will get some influence on the types of shows that we watch on the Bittersweet Film Club and spoilers ahead, you will get some influence on the types of shows that we watch on the Bittersweet Film Club. Right now we've got a vote for our upcoming June episode, but you're going to have even more power than that, so stay tuned.

Bittersweet Infamy is a proud member of the 604 Podcast Network. Our interstitial music is by Mitchell Collins. The song you are currently listening to is T Street by Brian Steele. Thanks for listening.