Native Americans call to boycott Avatar over cultural appropriation

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Native Americans and other Indigenous groups are calling for a boycott of the recently released movie of Avatar: The way of the water which features blue-skinned aliens over claims that the film is an attempt to whitewash colonialism.

Do NOT watch Avatar: The Way of Water

Join Natives & other Indigenous groups around the world in boycotting this horrible & racist film. Our cultures were appropriated in a harmful manner to satisfy some 🏳 man's savior complex.
No more Blueface!
Lakota people are powerful! pic.twitter.com/NmHVU565u3

— 🌽Asdzáá Tłʼéé honaaʼéí🌽(She/Her)🌽 (@asdza_tlehonaei) December 18, 2022

The movie which came out on December 6 in the UK and December 18 in the US reported profits of almost $400 million internationally.

But several critics, including Indigenous and Native American activists, have been calling for a total ban on the movie, which they argue contains elements of cultural appropriation.  

Some of the parallels that have already been noticed include associating human marine characters in the movie with real-life colonizers. 

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In the movie, after humans had depleted all of Earth's resources, they move to colonize the Na'vi's home planet of Pandora to exploit its natural resources. The Na'vi's succeed in warding off humans after Jake, a human falls in love with Neytiri, a female Na'vi.

In The Way of Water, the story takes place a decade after the first film, with events similar to the first sequel, where humans clash with Na'vi's again and Jake is once again the movie's hero.

So parallels are traced between humans and colonizers, and the Na'vi with indigenous peoples - although Cameron has previously said that the film is "a science fiction retelling of the history of North and South America in the early colonial period."

"The Avatar films are increasingly harmful, as they pretend to be anti-colonial but simultaneously uphold the same colonial narratives," Dr. Autumn Asher BlackDeer, 28, from the Southern Cheyenne Nation, told Dazed magazine. "The underlying storyline still positions Indigenous communities (like the Na’vi) as these primitive and uncivilized communities. Thus, it justifies colonialism in order to ‘bring progress’ to help the poor Natives."

"[Avatar] presents colonization as a noble and heroic deed – like how Jake is another white savior who ‘becomes Native’ to save the day… it’s a colonial fantasy,” Dr. BlackDeer added. "Both movies show that non-Natives can infiltrate our communities, speak over us, and try to make us play victim so we’ll see white people as our only hope. That’s colonial bullshit."

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It was further revealed that James Cameron had himself a narrow understanding of colonialism. In 2010, while describing his encounter with indigenous peoples in the Amazon, he said in an interview "I felt like I was 130 years back in time watching what the Lakota Sioux might have been saying at a point when they were being pushed and they were being killed and they were being asked to displace and they were being given some form of compensation."

"This was a driving force for me in the writing of Avatar – I couldn't help but think that if they [the Lakota Sioux] had had a time-window and they could see the future… and they could see their kids committing suicide at the highest suicide rates in the nation… because they were hopeless and they were a dead-end society – which is what is happening now – they would have fought a lot harder," he added.

"My Lakota relatives were one of the most powerful people the United States came across. They did fight. They won," Yué Begay, who is a Navajo artist and co-chair of Indigenous Pride Los Angeles, wrote in an open letter. "Their ancestors would be proud of their descendants for thriving, living, and just existing with their culture intact. But you do not show that in your films. Instead, you choose to show or glorify colonialism."

"James Cameron is guilty of [favoring] non-Indigenous folks to play Na’vi, an alien race based on many Indigenous cultures he [appropriated] from," she added. "This is a form of racist caricature known as ‘Blueface’ [...] where a creator appropriates many non-white cultures, blends them together indiscriminately or blatantly and has white people play or voice them using fiction as a medium to necessitate and validate their worldbuilding."

"Indigenous people know what’s best for our communities, we can tell our own stories,” Dr BlackDeer said. "We don't need some ole racist Jim telling his version of colonialism."

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