Brando method-acted it very clear in that interview that he didn't want to talk about himself or his movies, but only about the "American Indian". Which is rather cool in itself, but why in the hell did he agree do do the first part of the interview about himself anyway, just to play the annoying creep only to come alive whenever the conversation gets around to the "American Indian"?
You have to remember than Brando was always an iconoclast and a champion of the disenfranchised. It wasn't just Indians, he also supported the civil rights movement in the 60s, and later the Black Panthers, who, at the time were as radical as the American Indian Movement (AIM).
There is also the context of the times. The Panthers and AIM were actual
armed resistance to a society that they were quite adamant wasn't working for most non-white groups. A lot of white people thought, "Well, you know, they're right," and supported them (at least privately), but you only hear about the famous ones who had the nerve to say anything, despite the negative effect it might have on their "box office appeal." We were still in Vietnam at the time for chrissakes...shit was crazy in America, and a lot of things - and people - were unraveling.
Finally, you have to remember that Marlon Brando wasn't exactly at the peak of his career in the early 70s. Until
The Godfather, he'd pretty much been discarded and forgotten. So he knew what disenfranchisement felt like. He also grew up in Nebraska during the depression, so he probably saw first hand a lot of the outright hostility and disdain a lot of Midwestern people had for Indians at the time.
So there's a lot going on with the Brando/Littlefeather/Oscar thing, and I think that people who felt it was a publicity stunt by Brando were mistaken. It
was a publicity stunt - not to aggrandize Brando, but to publicize AIM and the points they were trying to make.
It was incredibly ballsy and upsetting to "Hollywood," (Look at James Bond's face in the picture below, he's confused and probably angry that he's become part of a protest) but things like that actually used to happen. People went
off-script quite often and frankly, life was more interesting.
;)
"Oh, sorry, no, we don't want that. You keep it."