Rights to famous 1971 Earth Day ‘Crying Indian’ ad given to Native American group, ad to be retired

Environmental nonprofit Keep America Beautiful has transferred the rights of its famous “Crying Indian” anti-littering public service announcement to the National Congress of American Indians.

The ad, first aired on Earth Day in 1971, featured actor Iron Eyes Cody in a buckskin outfit, wearing a feather in his hair, paddling a canoe in trash-strewn water. At the end of the ad, after someone has just littered on the roadway he is walking on, Cody sheds a single tear.

On Thursday, Keep America Beautiful justified its transfer of the rights to the PSA on the grounds that Cody’s getup “stereotyped American Indian and Alaska Native people and misappropriated Native culture.”