The Academy of Motion Picture Art and Sciences has just published the list of the 819 new members invited to join its ranks. Among them is Yalitza Aparicio, the first native women to be invited.

While the Oscar Academy is often criticized for being too masculine and too white, the year 2020 seems to be the one of openness. That’s what the list of 819 new members invited to join the prestigious Academy, published on Tuesday, June 30, suggests. 45% of this year’s invitation cards are sent to women and 36% to people of colour.

For the first time ever, an Native actress is also on the list. The 26-year-old Mexican indigenous girl, Yalitza Aparicio, was revealed in Roma, earning her a nomination for the Oscar for “Best Actress”. She was also the first indigenous woman to make the front page of the Mexican and Latin American edition of Vogue in a country where First Nations people are often invisible.

Native Americans in the movies

Yalitza Aparicio’s invitation to the Academy comes almost 50 years after the unforgettable intervention of Sacheen Littlefeather who came to refuse the Oscar awarded to Marlon Brando for his role in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” on May 27, 1973. When the winner’s name was announced, it was the young woman who stepped forward in front of Roger Moore and Ingrid Bergman to say a few words.

Marlon Brando said in suspense that the film industry was more responsible than anyone else for the degradation of the condition of the Native Americans by systematically mocking the characters they played on screen. A strong message on the condition of Native Americans in cinema in 1973 too often described as savage, hostile and demonic…

50 years later, Sylvana Opoya is also dreaming of an Oscar. This young Amerindian from Guyana has returned to her native village of Taluhwen, on the Maroni River, after studying modern literature at Cayenne University. She is a mother tongue speaker but she wants to be an actress. She is currently on tour with a play with the GdRA collective about her dual Amerindian and French culture, which is so dear to her.

Today, she is juggling her two identities and inventing a new one, singular and universal.

Find her portrait on Native Women Voices

Photo : UN Photo/Jean Marc Ferré

Océane Segura