## Sacheen Littlefeather: Before the Stage
Maria Louise Cruz was born on November 14, 1946, in Salinas, California. Her parents, Geraldine and Manuel Cruz, were saddlemakers who ran Cruz Saddlery. She grew up in California’s Central Valley, attended North Salinas High School, and was active in 4-H programs. She later enrolled at Hartnell Junior College.
She has said, in various interviews across the decades, that her father was of White Mountain Apache and Yaqui descent. She described a difficult childhood shaped in part by her father’s mental health struggles and the family’s economic circumstances. As a young woman, she experienced a mental health crisis of her own — she has spoken of a period of hospitalization following a suicide attempt around the age of nineteen.
In 1969, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she pursued modeling work and became involved in the Bay Area’s Indigenous activist community. She joined the United Bay Indian Council and became engaged with the movement that was transforming how Native Americans asserted their political rights in that era. Around 1970, she adopted the name Sacheen Littlefeather — a name that, according to her own account, was given to her through her connection to the Native community. The name change marked a deliberate commitment to an identity that was inseparable, for her, from the causes she was pursuing.
She became a spokesperson for the National American Indian Council and was involved in protests related to federal Indian programs throughout the early 1970s. She worked as a model and actress, taking roles in films including The Trial of Billy Jack and Winterhawk, and she was a member of the Red Earth Theater Company and the Screen Actors Guild.