On Earth Day, 1971, a Public service announcement featured Native American actor Chief Iron Eyes Cody aired for the first time. It said: “People Start Pollution. People can stop it.” Iron Eyes Cody became the symbol of environmentalism for a generation. He was known as, “The Crying Indian.” Michigan Now’s Chris McCarus looks at what the environmental movement still owes the ad today.
TRX1: The Ad starts with an indian chief paddling a birch bark canoe. Forest turns to city. Pages of a magazine and paper cups float on by. The camera angle widens and reveals a freighter at a dock. A factory pours smoke from its stacks. The indian hauls the canoe ashore. Trash has been strewn amongst the rocks. Actor William Conrad narrates. He starred in Gunsmoke, Ponderosa and the detective show Cannon. Gas guzzlers zooms by on an expressway. A passenger tosses out a bag of fast food. It hits the indian’s feet.
TRX2: The Crying Indian ad was produced by the Keep America Beautiful campaign and the Ad Council. The ad won several advertising awards.
AX2: “I remember it. And I remember it pretty vividly.”
TRX3: The ad was first aired on Earth Day in 1971. Veteran Detroit Free Press environmental reporter Hugh McDiarmid Jr. was still in grade school.
AX3: “It was certainly an iconic image and something that made a deep impression on a lot of people of my generation. Not only the masterful symbolism of the ad and the actor who played the indian. But it struck a chord as the right image at the right time.”
TRX4: McDiarmid now works for the Michigan Environmental Council. He says the ad was a logical result of Rachel Carson’s National Bestseller Silent Spring. The book told of the fight against DDT, the pesticide that killed birds at Michigan State University.
AX4: “There was a growing environmental awareness. I think It was on the cusp of American society realizing that we can’t wantonly dump pollutants into our streams and air and not pay for it in some way.”
TRX5: McDiarmid says the government took big steps in the 1970′s.
AX5: “The Clean Air Act, the Clean water act, in Michigan I think the bottle bill which still stands as a great achievement in reducing litter in Michigan and encouraging recycling passed in the late 70′s. I think Michigan was seen as a national leader in the 70′s and early 80′s in terms of environmental protection. And we were very proud of that. A lot of that has dissipated. The pendulum has swung away and we may be just sort of getting back to that.”
TRX6: Iron Eyes Cody made dozens of movies. Even 3 westerns with future President Ronald Reagan. His star is on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was born Espera DiCorti in Louisiana in His parents were both Italian immigrants. He eventually went to Texas then Hollywood with his his brothers. DiCorti changed his name to Cody. He married a native American women and adopted native American kids. When he died in 1999 at the age of 95 he had never admitted that he was Italian. Not native American. That doesn’t matter to Kay McGowan.
AX6: “The broader American population recognizes that when Europeans came to our American shores our land was not polluted. We had lived in harmony with our land. Our mother which is the earth.”
TRX7: McGowan is Cherokee and Choctaw. She’s a professor of anthropology and native American studies at Eastern Michigan University. She didn’t mind that the Crying Indian was a fake.
AX7: “I think that’s the only ad I’ve ever seen where native Americans were used to reflect environmental concerns.”