In 1971, a powerful ad began airing across the U.S. showing a Native American man paddling a canoe through polluted waters and standing beside a highway littered with trash. As a bag of garbage lands at his feet, a single tear rolls down his cheek. The narrator solemnly declares:
“People start pollution. People can stop it.”
This commercial, sponsored by the environmental group Keep America Beautiful, aimed to raise awareness about littering and pollution. It became one of the most iconic PSAs ever made, credited with boosting America’s early environmental movement.
🎭 The Actor Behind the “Crying Indian”
The man in the ad was Iron Eyes Cody, a well-known Hollywood actor famous for playing Native American roles in dozens of Westerns.
But here’s the twist — Iron Eyes Cody was not actually Native American.
His real name was Espera Oscar DeCorti, and he was born in 1904 in Louisiana to Italian immigrant parents. Despite this, Cody reinvented himself early in his Hollywood career, adopting a Native identity publicly and privately. He dressed in Native attire, spoke of a Cherokee-Cree heritage, and lived his entire life as if he were Native. By the time the truth was uncovered (decades later), he had fully embraced this identity, and many people still remembered him only as “the Indian who cried.”
😠 The Backlash from Native Americans
When the truth came out, many Native American communities were upset — and understandably so.
Their main concerns were:
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Cultural misrepresentation: Hollywood had a long history of using white actors to portray Native Americans, often in stereotypical or romanticized ways.
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Lost opportunity: Native actors were rarely hired for major roles, even in stories about their own people.
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Irony of the message: The ad supposedly honored Native respect for nature, yet it used a non-Native man to symbolize that message, continuing a cycle of appropriation.
For many Native Americans, the “crying Indian” symbol came to represent both a false image and a missed chance for authenticity in media.
🌿 The Legacy Today
While the commercial did succeed in raising environmental awareness, its cultural message remains complicated. Modern audiences often view it as a symbol of good intentions mixed with bad representation.
The irony is sharp — a fake “Indian” brought tears to America’s eyes, while real Native voices were still largely silenced in film and television. The Earth deserves respect — and so do the people whose image was used to defend it.
BJ
