Keep America Beautiful’s 1971 anti-litter campaign featured Iron Eyes Cody as a Native American man reacting sadly to pollution and became known as “The Crying Indian.”
The public-service announcement showed Cody arriving in a polluted landscape, with litter thrown from passing vehicles. A tear ran down his face as the narrator blamed people for creating the mess. The commercial was produced for Keep America Beautiful and became one of the best-known environmental advertisements in the United States.
Its emotional imagery helped make littering a national advertising issue and popularized the phrase “People start pollution. People can stop it.” The campaign won major attention and was frequently cited in discussions of environmental communication.
Later criticism focused on the commercial’s use of a stereotyped Native American figure and on Cody’s disputed identity claims. Those controversies are separate from the advertisement’s historical influence, which remains significant in the development of anti-litter messaging.