Article: “Marlon Brando’s speech at the First American Gala”, 1973

Article: “Marlon Brando’s speech at the First American Gala”

“Marlon Brando’s speech at the First American Gala”

from Andy Warhol Magazine, November 26, 1973

[Marlon Brando’s Speech Begins]

On the way here, some reporter wrapped me right over the head with a microphone and said you’re gonna have a…(heckle) Huh?…You wanna step outside? (laughter) You’re gonna have a program about starving people, mistreated people, sufferin people, denied, disenfranchised people at the Waldorf-Astoria…in tuxedoes? (laughter) So I pressed up against the microphone real close, breathing, wondering what the hell I was gonna say next and I said yes! I said where the hell are we gonna have it? I said how many of you reporters would come down to the reservation, sit in the sand, have sandy food and freeze to death (heckle) OK, you’re on because that’s where we’re gonna have it next time and it’s gonna be too far away! (applause) I really mean that. We’re gonna go on the reservations where everyone can see what a reservation’s like because the cultural shock of the impoverished, anguished and…poor people experienced by coming to this place, the Waldorf-Astoria and seeing people dancing around, photographers…it’s Disneyland! This doesn’t have anything to do with anything anyone on the reservations could possibly relate to…it’s Martians! (applause)

 

Marlon Brando with Ethel Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy’s wife

I wanna welcome you all to our little shindig here. It cost about 50 thousand dollars, will probably make about 15. (laughter) Enough to pay for my suit. (laughter) But the idea uh…this thing’s been buzzing around my mind. We had a rather lively press conference and I started it out by saying I’ll give a thousand dollars to anyone in this room who can tell me when the Indian Removal Act was ratified, put into effect. I didn’t say that as a matter of defiance, I meant it as a matter of practical experience because I knew that nobody in the room would know. Nobody knows anything about American Indians. All the people I know here I’m sure don’t know…they’ve read the same books I have. There was nothing in there I could recognize having researched this, having met American Indians and talked to them. There’s no resemblance. The text-books were written by John Wayne, I guess (laughter) They couldn’t have been written by any sane person, who had any semblance of intelligence or sense of intellectual responsibility. Well anyway, everyone guessed surprisingly close but they didn’t guess the date. The date was 1830.

Now I’ve got one of my favorite books here. It’s called “They Came Here First” by D’Arcy McNichol who was a Flat Head Indian and was, I think, the first Indian outside of a man named Clyde Warrior, that I ever knew. (War-Whoop) Right on! People know who Clyde was. Clyde was an Indian who was born in Oklahoma, who had a drinking problem and who was as much a devoted soldier, hero and nobleman that I ever met and he’d vomit blood at the National Indian Youth Council Meetings. I saw him vomit blood on the table once. He got up and left the room, came back and started talking some more and huh…he died. Died of ulcers, died of his whole life, what had happened to him and there are now organizations dedicated to his name doing good work and uh…I want to read something here about the Indian Removal Act that I think really encapsulates the whole evening. It was said by Senator Freylinghausen of New Jersey who talked for two days against the Senate bill. Now this bill was designed to remove all the Indians West of the Mississippi to what now is called Oklahoma, which used to be called Indian territory. There was objection to that removal, a suit brought by a tribe, Cherokee in this case and Justice Marshall said that’s not the way it’s going to be and that these people are going to live here for “as long as the rivers run and grass shall grow” which is a phrase you’ll find in every Indian treaty. “As long as the rivers run and the grass shall grow this land will be forever yours and never sold without your permission.” If you read Capra’s Treaties-it’s a book about that long and that thick-you’ll never get through it, but they all contain it. Now senator Freylinghausen was opposed to Indian removal and he said this:
“By immemorial possession, as the original tenants of the soil, they hold tile beyond and superior to the British Crown and Het colonies and all adverse pretensions of the Confederation and subsequent Union. God in His Providence planted these tribes on this Western continent, so far as we know, before Great Britain herself had a political existence. I believe, Sir, it is now seriously denied that the Indians are men endowed with kindred faculties and powers with ourselves. This conceded, I ask: In what code of laws of nations or by what process of abstract deduction have their rights been extinguished? It is one of the prerogatives of the white man, that he may disregard the dictates of moral principle, where an Indian is concerned.”

 

Marlon Brando with Ethel Kennedy and her sister Steven Smith

And I think we have followed the last part of that statement right through to the end. It’s impossible…I wish I had just a thousandth of the talents required to encapsulate in just a few fractured moments here what Indians experience has been ever since Coronado came smashing through the Southwest creating mayhem and death and suffering beyond description. I want to say a word about where we’re here tonight. Some of us are here to meet Indians, some us care, some of us don’t give a damn, some of us are ignorant, they don’t know anything, some of us want to know more. There are a thousand reasons where we’re here but I would hope on behalf of all my Indian friends, all the things that I know and have read and studied in an effort to find out, that we could help to reinstate these people and, in so doing, reinstate ourselves. We’d no longer be this myth, this John Wayne myth of what we think we are as a people, we’d no longer have to live in this fractured world of Nixonian ethics, we’d really be a people that could be honestly self-respecting.

What we need to do is realize that 400 years ago the Dutch went to Indonesia. After the war, the Indonesians said this is our turf, baby, we want it back, you’re Dutch, we’re Indonesian. Then it happened in Rangoon, Burma, Cambodia- the French fought like hell in Vietnam. They said this our turf, not yours, you don’t know what to do with it anyway. Then it happened in Africa and the sun started to set on the British empire. In India, a man named Gandhi got hit with clubs in the salt march to the sea- didn’t want to pay the tax on the salt- and they sat down and beat him with clubs, not him alone, hundreds of them, thousands smashed their heads, dislocated arms, kicked their eyes out. But it didn’t stop them and after 300 years of British rule, India became India. And it happened in France unbelievably. The French would simply not accept the fact that Algeria was not part of metropolitan France. And they said by God, we’re gonna kill de Gaulle before that becomes a fact and that they almost did it. But Algeria’s Algeria today- they don’t speak French, they speak Arabic.



Now you say well what the hell are you talking about, how many Indians are there for God’s sake- a million? Yeh, there’s about a million. There’re more Indians here than there are Jews in Soviet Russia and yet hundreds of millions of dollars are held in balance of trade because we’ve put on a bill saying that unless you allow these people to emigrate, we’re gonna make the deal. We’ve said to China, you’re an outlaw, 700 million people, we don’t want you around, we don’t want you in UN, because you’re not worthy. And then everything’s OK, we’re trading with them. And then the PLO, two days ago, blew somebody away, a German banker, and almost concomitantly, our Ambassador, Mr. Scali, said any serious consideration of the Palestine problem is going to have to include the interests of the Palestine people, which divested of all its Christiam ornaments, means that there’s going to be a country and only million people are going to be repatriated. They’re going to have they’re own country, they’re even going to have an Ambassador to the UN. That’sa million people. I don’t know- I would guess there are more than 15 countries that have less than 500 thousand people and yet they’re viable countries which seems peculiar because one of the things that we always say to one another is that we believe in the integrity of other people to pursue their birthright, to find their happiness, and to be sovereign, and anyone who challenges that sovereignty has got us to deal with. We’d tried to make it stick in Vietnam, we tried to make it here, we tried to make it stick there. Now…what about the treaties! Do we recognize the treaties in the world? Damn right we do! Wasn’t too long ago Kissinger went down to Panama, the Panamanians said listen, we want to renegotiate the treaty, we want a bigger share, a bigger cut of the pie. What do you think if Fidel castro said get out of Guantanamo Bay in 38 hours or it’s gonna all come down on ya? How long do you think we’d say uh, Mr. Castro, we think that uh perhaps the better part of valor would be to recognize the validity of our treaty with you?

A few people, Judge Bolt for one, are beginning to take cognizance of the fact that these are legitimate documents, and that they bear serious consideration. Now isn’t it easier for us to reinstate the American Indians in the same way we reinstated our avowed enemies, the Japanese, one moment blowing them out of the world, sending men, women and children all to hell in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, saying well, those are the fortunes of war, it tough on the kids, we realize that, but…we gotta do it anyway? Well, we did it but we built Japan up again, put them in shape, put them in business again- we’ve got atomic installations there now. We kicked the hell out of the Nazis, we fought them- a lotta Indians were killed in that war, a lotta Indians were maimed- and uh…who did we put back in the government? A surprising proportion of Nazis- Krupp’s back in business, the Ruhr valley is working, primarily because we rebuilt it. Now what is it going to cost us, what is it really going to mean if we reestablish a decent economy on Indian reservations? How much is it gonna hurt? It’s gonna hurt a lot. It’s gonna hurt a lot more if we don’t because there’s Indians that have been down on one knee- in 1923 the Miriam report came out and said that there’s 23…230 thousand Indians left of roughly one million, that’s all that was left- they are starving to death on the reservations, out of sight, out of mind, out of life and out of hope. But they never went down on both knees, they only went down on one knee and they’re up today and Indians are rising everywhere, Indian spirits are rising everywhere, Indian spirits are rising everywhere and I would hope that our spirits would rise along with it. It’s not gonna cost that much to reinstate these people, to recognize their religion, to recognize their sovereignty, to recognize the incredible gifts that they have bestowed on all of us.



Nobody knows that the Boy Scout manual was based on Indian lore! Nobody knows that the Pilgrims wouldn’t have lasted two seconds if the Algonquins or the Delawares or the Mohawks had said, listen, off the turf now, beat it, we don’t want you here! Supposing they’d been like Captain Cook trying to go to Fiji where they would’ve eaten him alive if he’d landed. They didn’t do that. They’re welcoming people. Columbus wrote about the nature of the warmth and the welcome he received all up and down the coast and then for the thanks, the warmth, the generosity and the kindness, and I know what that means because I’ve been touched by that tradition. I’ve been touched by the warmth and the hospitality of Indians that has lived somewhere under the ground, under the pain and the anguish of these years that have gone by.

Wel they helped us and what did we do? Cut their throats, lied to them, cheated them, starved them to death. If you have any doubts about what I’m telling you I will present you with United States military records, documentation that shows how we set about to destroy these people body, soul and spirit and this is going on today. (War-whoop) Yeh….on the Lenni reservation, in the past month, Indian was out there in his boat, layin’ his nets and because of Judge Bolt’s brave decision to recognize the treaty that gives parity to Indians, that allows them to have 50 percent of the catch…when the white man came into the territory, the Indians said here, fish. Are you hungry? Here’s some food. (War-whoop) Yeh…they taught the white man how to fish and what did the white man do? Came and took all the fish, All they did was pass laws, one law after another, like that, with the regularity of a clock. They sent them to Oklahoma and said “as long as the rivers run and the grass shall grow”. Then they found oil in Oklahoma, and they passed laws that said everything under the soil from three feet to the center of the earth belongs to the united States Government. Whenever they wanted Indian land they passed a law! That’s all they did. Wasn’t any different from the poll tax. Wasn’t any different in the literacy regulation.



Now it isn’t that tough, not that tough, to repair this silly, foolish, idiotic, stinking, inefficient, money-eating organization that eats its way into the heart of Indian hopes and dreams (War-whoop) costs millions and millions of dollars and you know what? Almost none of that gets to Indian tribes. (Applause and war-whoops) Let’s give ’em a chance! Give ’em a chance. They don’t want a hand-out, they want a leg-up! It’s their time! It’s the time for good people everywhere with sincere sense of conscience- and don’t forget, I’m not giving a performance here, I’ve given them before, that’s what I do to make my dough- but I’m telling you now in all honesty, Indians are not gonna backdown now, they’re against the wall now and have got nothing to loose. (Applause and war whoops).

I could go on, I suppose. I don’t want to berate you. I want to try to impart to you some of the experience I’ve had. I’ve been in medicine lodges. I’ve sweated with strangers that I didn’t know and we smoked the pipe and is was mixture of Esalen and…I don’t know…the couch, Freud and something mystical I could never understand but it…it meant something to me to be there. I was honored. I was there with Dennis Banks and a medicine man who said the drum has been silent since 1942 and I’m honored by my tribe, the Oggipoway, to perform this ceremony for you and he explained it to us, and we each in turn took the drum. And we were ass naked there, 4:30 in the morning, freezing cold in this little…hovel, sitting next to our brothers- I had a sense of brotherhood there more than I suppose anywhere I’ve ever been- and it was dark, and they brought the stones in, and they poured water on, and they put tobacco on, and we passed the pipe around, and every man took the drum, and he beat it four times, and they passed it around, and I thought, Christ, what the hell am I gonna say? But the Indian uh…mmm, uh, mmm, I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do, tryin’ to say what’s in my heart…what does that mean? Try and speak from you heart…I was embarrassed. And men cried. They said I drank too much, or I fought with my wife, or I wish I could do more for my people. And tears came down, and the place was shuddering with emotion, and I realized this wasn’t the kind of place where you could make a pleasant…sophisticated…affable comment. You had to say what you felt, and if you said anything about a lie, a lie of omission or lie of direct statement, they would’ve felt it immediately. And I was…I was…remade, in many ways, by the experience and uh..I’m gonna come to the end now because I…I find that it’s time that…(Applause)



I wanna say that uh…let’s do for the Indians what we did for our enemies…uh, it’s a matter of justice. I wanna tell you that one of the reasons I’m here is because I’m part of a profession that has done more damage to Indians- and to white people- we’ve raped your minds. We’ve made pictured about Indians, these savages, these stinking, horrifying, raping, mad uneducated people…these heathens. We’ve raped everybody’s mind. My mind was raped. I was brought up and all I came to know about Indians was what John Wayne told me. I don’t begrudge him that. He was brought up on that. unfortunately, he…he’s a little old, a little old to make a quick switch around but…even there may be hope for John Wayne. Ya can’t give up. Uh I…

I met a fellow once who impressed the hell out of me. I didn’t like him much at first. He was kinda tough and had kinda ball-bearing look about him- I was up in office and he had a lotta macho things around- and I didn’t really know what the meeting was about. We sorta started at one another and asked polite questions and I felt as if touched his arm I’d feel a microphone stand and…I saw him later. He was walking around. He walked around a lot, around poor people, around Indians, and I saw him give speeches. His tie was out and his hair was blowing and he didn’t give a damn what he looked like, didn’t give a damn about security and uh…I was inspired by him. I still take inspiration from him. I hate the fact that he is gone. He’s dead now. Name’s Bobby Kennedy. He was shot and I don’t think this country would be in the state it’s in today. I don’t think the Indians would have to struggling…(Applause) Damn right. And…but people have a funny way of living on even though they’re dead. I read the utterances of Red Jacket, Yellow Hand, Dull Knife…eloquent, eloquent Indian speakers, and I take inspiration from them and…he lives on and his spirit lives on, which is really what the hell it’s all about. We go from spirit to spirit, we still draw from the Greeks, the Romans, the Bible and Christ, or Buddha…whoever we look to for guidance and help. There’s a Robert F. Kennedy Foundation that makes life of many Indian children much brighter and heading that organization is a lady I met tonight who…is a straight broad…and I don’t mean that in an off-hand way, Ethel. Name’s Ethel Kennedy…(Applause)


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