You are who you say you are

In the weird enchantment that is my life, goofy things happen.  Like last week, the day that Rebecca invited me over to tend bees and also possibly have lunch with Sacheen Littlefeather.  Who, I asked?  She said, Google her, you'll remember.  So naturally I did.  I Googled and then sat for a few hours doing "research," which is another way of saying that I rock-hopped around the interwebz and indulged in a documentary streamed to my laptop courtesy of Netflix.  

This is Sacheen Littlefeather.  In 1973, Marlon Brando asked Sacheen to take the stage at the Oscars and refuse his award for Best Actor in The Godfather, to call attention to the treatment of Native Americans in the movies and at the siege then underway at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

That's right: I had lunch with a woman who made history.

I don't remember seeing this on television when it happened, but I do remember the enormity of the flap that Sacheen's presence represented, the way that people were thrown off, resentful of her message, even though she was only able to ad-lib for 60 seconds rather than reading the 15-page statement that Brando had asked her to deliver.

So yes, in this crazy enchantment of my life, I met and had lunch with Sacheen, now 65 and resident of the same town as me.  I tried not to be an enormous fawning nerd, and spent at least the first 45 minutes just listening, really, listening to someone who really is my elder, someone who was There, you know, someone who was a force in the Civil Rights Movement.

As I learned in the really excellent documentary Reel Injun watched as part of my "research," Sacheen played a key role in a dramatic change in the depiction of Native Americans in movies and in drawing the public eye to the condition of Native populations in this country.  The vast majority of us who live on this beautiful land should always be giving thanks to those who came before us, those who were here before we were, from whom so much was taken.  It's not as though I didn't know this before -- I read the Howard Zinn, ok, and grew up on picket lines and peace marches with my parents -- but I'd forgotten what I knew, lost in my grateful complacency.  And honestly, I learned so much through Reel Injun, things I'm still thinking about, notes I just pulled out last night at dinner with some friends, because I needed to talk about it, share it, still.

Every child of my era -- raised in the 70s -- knows this face, the crying face of Iron Eyes Cody in the Keep America Beautiful ad campaign, a face synonymous for so many of us with the early ecology movement and with Native Americans.  I think Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, my contemporary, even has this tattooed on him. It's a powerful image that's burned into our minds -- one that stands for so much.  Look what we've done to his land, the land of his people?  The ad states, "People start pollution, people can stop it."

Turns out, as I learned from Reel Injun, that Iron Eyes Cody was born Espera Oscar de Corti in April 1904, the child of Sicilian immigrants.  When he moved to Hollywood to be an actor, he claimed Cherokee-Cree ancestry and went on to appear in 200 films.  He fulfilled the viewers' expectations of what a Native American should look like, an improvement really over the norm -- which was white actors in painted faces, with Native Americans simply hired on as extras but watched carefully lest they get up to any Indian hijinx.  

The reason Iron Eyes Cody interests me, besides his iconic image, is that he fully lived this story that he'd invented.  He actually, over time and thanks to his unshakable commitment to his story, became Cherokee-Cree.  He married a Native American woman, adopted two Dakota-Maricopa boys, and lived his entire life as a Native American.  During his lifetime, he was active in support of Native American causes, and to this day supports scholarships for Native American youth.

He was Cherokee-Cree who just happened to be born to Sicilian parents.

This is profound.  If this Sicilian kid could invent this identify, then fully inhabit it 100% with total commitment, then guess what?  So can each one of us.  I'm not suggesting that each of us move to Hollywood and take on a Native American identify, but think what volumes his life speaks to the power of committed self-definition?

You can be whatever you want to be.  All you have to do is figure out what that thing is, say it, and DO it, over and over, for your whole life, even into and beyond your death.  Want to be a writer?  Just say you are, then do it, and do it, and do it.  And boom, there you are: a writer.

Who are you?  It's whoever you say you are, as long as you keep saying it, with total commitment, over and over until it's a habit, as natural to you as breathing.  

An amazing life, really.  I can't recommend Reel Injun more highly.  Check out the trailer below.

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Comments

[Anya]

Really enjoyed this piece and the food-for-thought that rode into town with it. Thank you.