The Crying Indian ("People Start Pollution. People Can Stop It.")
Keep America Beautiful / Ad Council1971
The Crying Indian ("People Start Pollution. People Can Stop It.") is a 1971 public service announcement for Keep America Beautiful / Ad Council, created by Marsteller Advertising.
The line
People start pollution. People can stop it.
Why it works
One of the most effective — and most re-examined — PSAs ever aired. Debuting on Earth Day 1971, it showed a buckskin-clad figure canoeing through industrial waste; a bag of litter lands at his feet, and a single tear falls. The campaign ran until 1983, won two Clios, made Ad Age's top 100 campaigns of the century, and was credited with helping cut litter dramatically in hundreds of communities. It is studied today on two levels: as craft (the single-tear close-up remains a masterclass in wordless emotional compression) and as a cautionary text — the 'Indian' was Italian-American actor Iron Eyes Cody, the imagery stereotyped Native people, and critics note the campaign shifted pollution's blame from industry to individuals. In 2023 Keep America Beautiful formally retired the ad, transferring it to the National Congress of American Indians, which called it "inappropriate then and now." Few ads teach more about both the power and the responsibility of persuasion.
Techniques
- Pathos A single tear on the face of a man paddling through industrial waste compresses guilt and sorrow into one wordless close-up.
- Purpose and cause Ties the message to an anti-litter cause, telling viewers that because people start pollution, people can stop it.
Sources · 4
- Pollution Prevention: Keep America Beautiful — Iron Eyes Cody (campaign history and results)
- After the 'Crying Indian,' Keep America Beautiful Starts a New Campaign (Marsteller; ran until 1983)
- National Congress of American Indians Acquires Rights, Retires "Crying Indian"
- Rights to famed PSA of a crying Native American now held by an Indigenous group
Updated
