Rights to a famous 1970s-era anti-pollution ad showing a man in Native American attire shedding a single tear at the sight of smokestacks are being transferred to the National Congress of American Indians.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Since its debut in 1971, an anti-pollution ad showing a man in Native American attire shed a single tear at the sight of smokestacks and litter taking over a once unblemished landscape has become an indelible piece of TV pop culture.
The nonprofit that originally commissioned the advertisement, Keep America Beautiful, had long been considering how to retire the ad and announced this week that it's doing so by transferring ownership of the rights to the National Congress of American Indians. From there, Cody, who was Italian American but claimed to have Cherokee heritage through his father, was typecast as a stock Native American character, appearing in over 80 films. Most of the time, his character was simply"Indian,""Indian Chief" or"Indian Joe."
"At that point, every single person who showed up with braids and buckskins, on TV or anywhere in the movies, I glommed on to that because it was such a rare thing to see," said Folsom, whose areas of study include Native American pop culture."I did see how people littered, and I did see how the creeks and the rivers were getting polluted."
She applauded Keep America Beautiful's decision as an"appropriate move." It will mean a trusted group can help control the narrative the ad has promoted for over 50 years, she said. "It was one of the top 100 commercials," said Robert Cody, an enrolled member of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community in Arizona.
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