I got dressed in my traditional Indian regalia, but there was a man, he was the producer of the whole show. He took that speech away from me and he warned me very sternly. “I’ll give you 60 seconds or less. And if you go over that 60 seconds, I’ll have you arrested. I’ll have you put in handcuffs.”
– Sacheen Littlefeather in Reel Injun (2009), dir. Neil Diamond.
You can watch the original speech here.
The way she was treated by people was sickening. The self centered indignation from whites was pretty awful, and trying to discredit her heritage was despicable. Everything she said was true. Hollywood still whitewashes the hell out of Native American and other POC characters. Just look at the casting of Johnny Depp in The Lone Ranger as one example.