Introduction:
If you think about it the movie Avatar somewhat reflects our history relatively well. The Na’vi tribe and the first nations peoples of Canada were both somewhat related to each other from how they were treated by other people of different ethnicities. Some people may not think about how they relate when the watch the movie just because they want to see it or just for entertainment. But a couple of the ways that the First Nations and the Na’vi People in the movie Avatar relate are through cultural contact, ethnocentrism, and marginalization.
Paragraph One: Cultural Contact & Colonialism
Cultural contact is the contact between two or more cultures and colonialism is when someone puts a settlement or colony on another land other than your own. In Avatar the Na’vi tribe comes into cultural contact with the Sky People when they came to their planet to take the resources underneath the land where the Na’vi have created a home and live. The Sky People went onto Pandora as avatars to interact with the Na’vi and learn their ways and to try to teach them the human ways and they go in as almost a way of colonialism. Later Jake goes in as an avatar and he learns the way of the Na’vi and they accept him into the people and he changes the way he thinks about them and adopts a new respect for how they relate to the land. The way the Sky People and the Na’vi tribe come into contact is almost the same way that the First Nations and the Europeans came into contact in our past. The Europeans came into Canada and interacted along with the First Nations trying to trade and settled into the First Nations people’s land the same way that the Sky People sent some of their people onto Pandora with the Na’vi but that’s not the only way that the Na’vi and the First Nations relate.
Paragraph Two: Marginalization
Marginalization is placing something or someone into a position of importance, influence, or power. When the Sky People realized that Pandora had some valuable resources under their land they thought that it was okay for them to take away the nature from the Na’vi people to get to the resources so they sent Jake Sully in as an avatar and got him to learn the way of the Na’vi and tried to get them to trust Jake so that when he told them that the Sky People were coming they would leave the land so that the humans could have what they wanted from them. They marginalized Jake and placed him into a position of responsibility kind of like how the Europeans sent out ships of people to explore around and they thought they could take anything from anyone they wanted to which is ethnocentrism.
Paragraph Three: Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism is when someone or a group of people believe that their ethnicity is better than everyone else’s. The sky people thought that they were better than the Na’vi so they thought they had to send people in to teach the people the way that they lived and expected them to adopt the way they lived because they believed that the way they lived was the right way and that everyone else should live the way they do and when they didn’t adopt their ways the Sky People thought that they could just take everything away from them the same way the Europeans thought about the First Nations. Both the Sky People and the Europeans took away the land and nature away from others, and the Na’vi and the First Nations both had extremely close relations to the land. The Na’vi and the First nations were both extremely exposed to Ethnocentrism because the people that were taking everything away from them both believed that they could do anything that they wanted to other people of other ethnicities and that their way was always right.
Conclusion:
The First Nations and the Na’vi, along with the Sky People and the Europeans were alike in ways but people may not notice that at first thought. Some people have to look harder at the ways that ethnocentrism, cultural contact, and marginalization relate to our history and also to the movie Avatar. But you have to remember that what happened to the Na’vi people also happened to the First Nations people of Canada in our history.
This is going to be a pretty good essay. It is well structured and has a solid thesis. You will need to clean up your grammar. If you notice in the second paragraph you have a sentence with 4 "and"s in it. Try to keep it to one. If you have more than one you are often introducing new ideas/subjects into the sentence. These new ideas/subjects should have their own sentences.
ReplyDeleteYou seem to be a little confused by marginalization. You are not the only one. Marginalization is not the placing of someone in power, it is placing of someone (or in our discussion a group) in a position of lesser power. It is the pushing of people to the fringe of society. I use the example of notepaper. On your notepaper in your binder there are blue lines to write on and there is a red line signifying the margin. Or if you use Microsoft Word, the space at the edge of you sheet where the text does not go is the margin. It is not as important as the space where the writing goes and it is pushed to the side. This is a good way of remembering this. In Canada the First Nations were marginalized by being pushed off their land and being forced to live on reserves. They were no longer in control of their own destinies as compared to the way they were before the Europeans came. This is a perfect example of marginalization.
Other than grammar and the marginalization issue it seems pretty good. I would say that this is going to be a competent essay. If you would like it to increase to an exemplary essay you may want to increase your usage of terms and evidence from class instruction. As an example you may want to draw a direct comparison of what the Europeans did to the Beothuk people. You could discuss what resources the Europeans were gathering here. You could even discuss the differences between the European systems (mercantilism) vs. what happened in the movie. You could discuss "White Man's Burden" and how it relates to the frame of mind that the Sky-People had. I can give you more suggestions if you want. the key is to gather as much concrete evidence and social studies content to create a comprehensive explanation of your understanding of the historical globalization.
Remember to read this out loud and have someone else read it out loud to you.