A little more than a year ago, Sacheen Littlefeather was watching television in her Marin County, Calif., home when her past unexpectedly jumped out of the set.
''A promo came on for the Academy Awards show,'' recalled Littlefeather, a major figure in American Indian education and AIDS prevention circles, but probably best known as the woman who refused Marlon Brando`s ''The Godfather'' Oscar in 1973.
''There I was, refusing the award; they were using it in a 30-second promo: `One of those spontaneous moments! Television history! You never know what you`re gonna see, watch the Academy Awards!` I thought: `Holy cow. Good thing I`m sitting down.` ''
Of course, it was ironic. When Littlefeather, then an aspiring actress, agreed to reject the best-actor statuette for Brando because of the movie and television industries` historically bad treatment of American Indians, it was considered an outrage. Whatever career hopes the young actress harbored were ruined; she was essentially blackballed by the film community and vilified in the media by people who, she claims, never knew her or sought to hear her side of the story.
But a lot has changed in the nearly two decades since that night. Not only are they using Littlefeather`s footage to promote Oscar broadcasts now, but exactly the kind of movie about American Indians she`d always hoped would be made, ''Dances With Wolves,'' was the big winner at the recent 63rd Academy Awards.
''I prayed for this many years ago, that something like this would happen,'' Littlefeather said of Kevin Costner`s film about an 1860s cavalry officer who falls in love with the Sioux way of life, and which features numerous Indian performers speaking in the Lakota language.
''I feel really good that it`s a real positive portrayal of Native American people. I think `Dances With Wolves` will encourage other native people to get involved in the (film) industry. Now there`s going to be a lot more interest in making and watching authentic films.''
An urban Indian of mixed Apache, Yaqui-Pueblo and Caucasian heritage, Littlefeather was reared Maria Cruz in the Bay area by white foster parents. She attributes the flowering of her Indian political consciousness to the 1969 occupation of San Francisco Bay`s Alcatraz Island by Indian activists.
Littlefeather later became public-service director for a San Francisco radio station. At the same time, her acting career was inching along. Littlefeather won the Miss Vampire of America competition, a promotional beauty pageant that led to a small role in the movie ''House of Dark Shadows.'' She moved on to bit parts in films such as ''The Gang That Couldn`t Shoot Straight'' and ''The Laughing Policeman.''
Littlefeather met Brando through one of her San Francisco neighbors,
''Godfather'' director Francis Ford Coppola. ''Our interest in common was the fact that Brando was interested in Native Americans,'' she said. ''I wanted to see if that interest was sincere.''
Apparently, it was sincere enough for Brando to suggest that Littlefeather attend the `73 Oscar ceremonies in his stead and decline the Oscar if he won. ''It came from Mr. Brando,'' she said of the scheme. ''It certainly wasn`t my idea. He asked me to reject it for him, which seemed like a very difficult thing to do.''
It was. Both Brando and Littlefeather took a lot of heat for the stunt-Brando, mainly, for cowardice, Littlefeather for just daring to do it.
''I told the truth,'' she said, confirming that she believed in her statements about Hollywood`s negative portrayals and sparse employment of Indians at the time. ''My idea was, if people would`ve heard me out, that Native American people are terrifically talented, that we are able to act and be in films and make them box-office successes if we are only left to do it in a way like `Dances With Wolves.`
''But in those days, nobody wanted to hear this, or at least they didn`t want to hear it from me.''
Although Littlefeather, now in her mid-40s, presents a gracious, optimistic and often humorous persona, she still, understandably, chafes at the memory of the Oscar show`s fallout.
''I was boycotted (by the film industry); somebody had to pay the price,'' she said. ''I know that Mr. Brando went off and made other movies after the `73 Oscar ceremonies, and that his career escalated after the fact. He went on his own path, and I went on mine.''
The path Littlefeather took after her acting career was cut short has been one of ongoing achievement. In 1979, she helped found the National American Indian Performing Arts Registry, an agency that has aided many of the actors who appear in ''Wolves.''
On other show-business fronts, Littlefeather shared in an Emmy Award for her advisory work on PBS` 1984 ''Dance in America'' presentation of the ballet ''Song for a Dead Warrior.'' She is also heavily involved with two PBS series, ''Remember Me Forever'' and ''The Americas Before Columbus,'' both scheduled for broadcast in 1992. She has produced a variety of films on American Indian health subjects as well.
Littlefeather also teaches seminars about the Indians` portrayal in American media and is involved with Santa Fe`s Institute of American Indian Arts, which trains future filmmakers.
Littlefeather`s most recent passion is the American Indian AIDS Institute of San Francisco, an educational and support group she co-founded a few years ago after too many friends died in isolation from the incurable virus.
Of the `73 incident, Littlefeather said: ''It didn`t end my life and it didn`t kill my spirit. I`m not an embittered person.
''You know, things turn around,'' she said, referring as much to her personal development as to that of a society that has learned to embrace a film like ''Dances With Wolves.'' ''It`s one of those things. Climates change. Things you did back in `73, you wouldn`t do now. We all grow and change and make, perhaps, wiser choices.''