Final Essay!!

Social 10-1 Position Paper

By: Morgan Van Dusen

What did screenwriter, film director and editor, James Cameron, have in mind when coming up with the action filled plot line for the award winning movie “Avatar”? Did he simply have entertainment in mind, or was there something more? Comparing the major events in Avatar to our past, most specifically the colonization of North America, you will find there are numerous similarities between the two. Similarities such as the burden the humans felt in the movie, as they believed that it was their right to take over the Na’vi’s Hometree, and to marginalize them and to take away what was below the Hometree. This was much like how the Europeans felt that their culture was superior to the First Nations, and that it was the Europeans duty to civilize the ‘savages’, as the Europeans had a very ethnocentric attitude. Avatar and our past have connections through many parts of our past such as marginalization, ethnocentrism, but beginning with globalization.

A type of globalization occurred in both the interaction of the Na’vi and the humans, or Sky People, who contacted the Na’vi though Avatars, and the interaction of the Europeans and the First Nations in North America. The humans had discovered Pandora, a planet in the star systems that were populated by the Na'vi, and through cultural contact, the Sky People decided that they were an unfit society, and not up to the standards that the Sky People’s society was at. In the minds of the Sky People, the Na’vi’s were savages and needed to learn new and more proper ways or living. “Look, Sully, I want you to learn this savages from the inside, I want you to gain their trust. I need to know how to force their cooperation or hammer them hard if they won't.” said Colonel Miles Quartich, who was willing to destroy anything in his path to push aside the Na’vi and get to the unobtanium. The exact same event occurred with the Europeans. The Europeans had left their continent to escape religious persecution and discovered North America. The Europeans discovered indigent peoples, and decided that they needed to civilize them, so they laid out the land how they wanted it, similar to how Europe was before. They mapped the land they discovered, and gave new names to all of their discoveries. They began to colonize. The Europeans first started colonizing North America in the 16th and 17th centuries; they integrated themselves into society forcefully, changing everything as they pleased. They felt it was their duty and their right to change the First Nations into something they were not.

            Since the Sky People felt it was their right to take away the home of the Na’vi to destroy the Hometree, civilize them, and to take the precious unobtanium, it became very stressful and almost a burden. This played right into the term ‘White Man’s Burden.’ The Europeans also felt a very strong responsibility and felt that it was their obligation to take over the land that the First Nations had clearly been occupying. Both societies, the Sky People and Europeans, had a very strong attitude that both of their ethnicity was the best, so both had a very ethnocentric outlook over the Na’vi and First Nations. The Sky People had no empathy whatsoever if they tore apart families in the demolition of the Na’vi’s Hometree just to retrieve the mineral, unobtanium. The Europeans as well had no interest in preserving the First Nations culture, since the Europeans felt their culture wasn’t politically correct anyways, the Europeans decided to assimilated the First Nations. They pushed them aside, ignored them completely, and marginalized every First Nations person. 

           

With the Sky People and Europeans taking no notice of the Na’vi or First Nations presence or ownership of the land, the Sky People and Europeans simply either marginalized them, or if that was not possible because the Na’vi and First Nations would rebel, they would assimilate them. The Sky People had no sympathy what so ever towards the Na’vi, they did not care if they totally demolished all of what the Na’vi had that made up their cultural identity, as long as they got the unobtanium. But to the Europeans, land was wealth. If you had tons of land, you were royalty. If you did not, you were a peasant. And the First Nations had a lot of land that the Europeans felt was not being used properly, so they took it upon themselves to depopulate the First Nations, and to integrate the First Nations into the European culture and way of life. This was an attempt to completely strip them of their identity, and turn the First Nations into something they were not, and did not want to be. The Europeans could have accepted the First Nations culture and through acculturation and accommodation, lived peacefully together on the same land and possibly intermixed and to combine each other’s culture to create a hybridized society. The Sky People could have done the same thing and made peace with the Na’vi and possibly make a deal with the Na’vi to share the mineral. But both the Sky People and Europeans decided to use their advanced technology to take over the Na’vi and First Nations. Destroying the Na’vi and First Nations home land and Hometree, and using it for worse purposes.

With the comparison of the plot line of the movie Avatar, to our past colonization in North America, the similarities are quite noticeable. Both the Sky People and Europeans simply marginalized the Na’vi and First Nations because they though it was their right and duty, and because they thought their culture was better, and assimilated the ‘savages’ to take over the land and use it for their purposes. They events that occurred during the colonization of North America are reflected in the movie Avatar. Still today there are disagreements on the rights that our First Nations receive and if some of our actions infringe on their territory, and that all stems back to the Europeans ethnocentric attitudes and actions. We’re all human. We all make mistakes. But treating people the way you want to be treated could have definitely been a good lesson to have taught the Europeans.