‘Avatar: The Sense of Water’: Native Americans accuse James Cameron of appropriation and boycott the film

‘Avatar: The Sense of Water’ had an even better preview than ‘Avatar’, but the criticisms that appeared with the first film were reiterated and intensified with the second. Let’s talk about accusations by several Native American communities about the appropriation and exploitation of their cultures in a film that opposes colonialism and expropriation.

“James Cameron is guilty of supporting non-indigenous people to play the Na’vi, an alien race based on many indigenous cultures he appropriated”says a tweet posted by Asdzáá Tléé honaa’éí, a member of the Navajo tribe and co-chair of the organization Indigenous Pride LA. The activist urges to do a boycott the film to appropriate their culture “foster the savior complex” of a white man, i.e. the director and screenwriter of the sequel. The tweet concludes: “No more blue face! The Lakota are powerful!”. “Blueface” refers to the same practice as “blackface”, whereby white actors put on makeup to appear black, but in this case under the guise that they are a new species and, therefore, that a white performer can drive an indigenous narrative under the guise of having blue skin. The tweet soon spread, reaching more than 45,000 likes.

DO NOT watch Avatar: The Water Way

Join native and other indigenous groups around the world to boycott this horrific and racist film. Have our cultures maliciously appropriated themselves to satisfy some? complex savior of man.
No more blue face!
The Lakota are powerful! pic.twitter.com/NmHVU565u3

? ?Asdzáá T??éé honaa?éí?(She/She)? (@asdza_tlehonaei) December 18, 2022

It’s no secret: Cameron has always admitted it the stories of indigenous Brazilians she learned firsthand when she joined the protest against the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the Amazon in 2010 were the “driving force” What led him to write ‘Avatar’. “It felt like I went back 130 years to see what the Lakota Sioux might have said at a time when they were being pushed around and killed and I asked that if they were displaced they would receive some sort of compensation.”he tells the Guardian. “This prompted me to write ‘Avatar’: I couldn’t help but think that if them [los sioux lakota] If they had a window of time and could see into the future, and could see their children commit suicide with the highest suicide rates in the country because they were hopeless and a dead-end society – which is what is happening now – they would they fought a lot more”. Those words turned against him more than a decade later, adding to the list of reasons behind the boycott, as some people they believe his words are blaming the Lakota victims for not being strong enough in a fight that should never have happened.

Hey James Cameron, nobody fought harder than them. That’s how you still know/hear about them today, their battles, their stories, their culture, and not so much the rest of us bullshit. Victim blaming natives for violent colonization? what the hell…? pic.twitter.com/oxvKVsHA08

? wa:gö’-things that are eaten (@LakotaMan69) December 17, 2022

“Hey, James Cameron, nobody fought harder than them. Is that why you still hear about them today, their battles, their stories, their culture, and not so much about the rest of us, idiot? Blame the natives for violent colonization? What the fuck?”

yes this is the problem lmfao

? ?Johnny? (@cassonettocryptid) December 17, 2022

“He said he wanted to create his own indigenous people, not take minorities.”

“Yes, that’s the problem.”

In the ‘Avatar’ saga, Cameron is inspired by numerous indigenous tribes and one of the most present in the sequel is the Maori culture, which according to Collider is honored in the latest film. The Polynesian tribe of New Zealand also influenced the first film and is one of the foundations on which the screenwriter created the Na’vi language. In addition to being filmed in New Zealand, the tattoo design for ‘Avatar: The Water Sense’ was done by a local production team. Secondly, The spirit animals of the Na’vi are the tulkun, creatures that resemble whales., with which the Maori tribes feel a great spiritual bond; when they needed to hunt them, it was important for the early tribes to use their entire bodies out of respect, a theme also criticized by the film itself.

The director’s part

James Cameron hasn’t spoken out on these allegations yet, but he did answer very similar questions following the original film’s premiere. In a 2010 interview, Cameron backed this up “The intention with ‘Avatar’, without being preachy and in the context of an adventure story, was to address these issues and give people not just an intellectual reaction, but a powerful, emotional and cathartic film”. For Cameron, the movie was a “Global Consciousness Alert”.

In the face of criticisms received for having a white actor (Sam Worthington) as a hero of the Na’vi, in a “white messiah” figure, Cameron replied: “I don’t think any of the indigenous people who see their reality reflected in the film feel it, at all, nor that it is an impediment to enjoying the film”. In ‘Avatar: The Sense of Water’ some actors and actresses of the original are repeated, such as Zoe Saldaña, CCH Pounder, but there are also new additions to the cast, such as Filip Geljo, Cliff Curtis, Bailey Bass and Duane Evans Jr.

In the same interview, the journalist insisted to the director if there had been any reaction from the indigenous community, to which Cameron replied: “Yes, and overwhelmingly positive, overwhelmingly so. Maybe I rely on people coming up to me and talking to me, but no one has come to yell at me on any ‘White Messiah’ issue.”. Furthermore, he ventures to distinguish between the situation of Native Americans in the United States and that of indigenous people who see their lands destroyed. “When all you have to defend yourself are bows and arrows, there needs to be an intervention from the international community. Therefore, I am not concerned with what race the Messiahs are, but that we all are to be those MessiahsWe have to help these people because you can’t stop a bulldozer with bows and arrows.” The director concluded with a very clear message: “Having said this, it is absolutely essential that indigenous leaders have a voice. They are the ones that should be brought to political trials. This is essential. I don’t want to speak for them.”