The rule change closed that specific possibility. Whether the closing was defensive (protecting the ceremony from further disruption) or principled (ensuring that the awards represent genuine acceptance of the industry’s recognition) is a question the Academy’s administrative language declined to answer.
## The 2023 In Memoriam Absence and What It Meant
The 95th Academy Awards ceremony, held in March 2023, was the first Oscar ceremony following Sacheen Littlefeather’s death. Standard practice at the Oscars includes an “In Memoriam” segment honoring industry figures who died in the preceding year.
Sacheen Littlefeather was not included in the segment.
The omission was noted publicly, particularly by Indigenous advocates and filmmakers who saw it as a continuation of the pattern that had defined the Academy’s relationship with Littlefeather across her lifetime: acknowledgment in one moment, withdrawal in the next. The Academy did not publicly explain the decision. The context — her sisters’ contested ancestry claims, the genealogical research, the request to remove her tribute from the Academy Museum — provided an evident reason, without confirming that the reason was determinative.
The omission raised the specific question the prompt’s guardrails identify: the Academy’s apology was for the treatment she received, not for a certification of her ancestry claims. These are distinct matters, and treating them as interchangeable produces a logical error. A woman who was booed off the Oscar stage in 1973 because she was there to make a statement about the treatment of Indigenous people, and who faced professional consequences as a result, received those responses regardless of whether her ancestry was what she claimed. The treatment was what it was. The apology addressed the treatment.