Avatar final draft

Social 10-1 Avatar Essay

Alden Mueller

In our history we had many historical events. And in the movie Avatar the director James Cameron made many innuendos toward our history, through the modern day technology. In this essay I will be stating the references that he was portraying in the movie, they are; culture contact, colonialism, assimilation, ethnocentrism, marginalization and white man’s burden. I will be explaining the relationship between these key points and the movie Avatar.

In the movie Avatar the humans and the Na’vi come in contact many times. When we first arrived on Pandora, they had a good approach to the native people. They brought in Gracie to teach them in the schools the humans provided, and in return they taught her some of the ways of their culture. Though the humans on the planet only came for one purpose, to look for the expensive metal Unabtainium. Once they start getting fed up with the slow works of the avatar humans with their work, the start using their big advantage, Weapons. With this advantage over the Na’vi people they can’t defend themselves. The sky people, as the Na’vi call the humans; force them out of their home with gases and missiles.  What this is representing is when the first Europeans came to North America and took advantage of the First nation’s people with trading beaver fur for little to nothing.

Ethnocentrism has been through time for many years.  People often think they are bigger, better than someone else. They think that they’re better than them, just because they are different. The movie Avatar it shows that the sky people are bigger and better and can do whatever they please to the indeginus people. In our history an example of this would be, … Marginalization is where you push away, ignore, or force someone into a lesser power. In the movie there is an example of this when jake first met the Na’vi they didn’t listen to what he had to say. A other is the sky people ignored and pushed away the scientists about their plan to try to convince the Na’vi to leave the home tree. These two terms work well together because when on happens the other usual follows.  

White man’s Burden is when you think that it’s your duty to take care of another race. We did this to the First nations People of Canada. We came in, took their land and their rights. We put them on a chunk of land that we didn’t want and told them they had to live there. And on this land they had all the necessities of living, but they weren’t allowed to vote. They could stay a “Status Indian” on the reserve and live, or lose all this and become a true Canadian and be able to vote. If they decided to drop their status they wouldn’t get a job, because nobody would hire them. The Government was trying to assimilate the natives, but in the end it didn’t work. They are still thought less of by some of us Canadians, but some of them have moved off the reserve and is making a living. The rest of them that are still on the reserves are thought out to be alcoholics and drug users. The stereotype for these people has blown up out of proportion.

In each of these topics I have talked about they all have something in common, Globalization. All for areas of it has been cover, Social with coming in contact with different cultures, political by coming in and trying to control the first nations, economics with , and environmental by taking over the land that was the Native’s.

(Still a work in progress)