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Social 10-1 Avatar Essay

Brandon Kent

Throughout history, people have believed that to be successful or important, they have to take over other people or countries or try to take something that’s not theirs. If you compare the Award winning Avatar to the settling of North America, the events are very similar. In both Avatar and the settling of North America, Ethnocentrism, Acculturation, Cultural Contact, Marginalization, Colonialism all took place.

Nobody can say whether the things that took place in avatar or even in our history were good or bad because it depends on who’s side you’re looking at. In avatar if you’re looking at the side of the NA’VI people, the things that happened to them in the beginning and near the end were horrible. In the end, the NA’VI beat the humans and sent them back to earth. The First Nations life was pretty good before the Europeans came over. When the Europeans came over they slaughtered and took everything from the First Nations. Nearly the same exact happenings happened to the NA’VI and the First Nations, like people coming and taking and destroying their lands and taking their resources. The Europeans and the humans (sky people from avatar) are very similar because they both went to a different place to get resources.

Ethnocentrism means that one ethnic group or culture thinks they are superior to others. Ethnocentrism and White Man's Burden are very similar because the White Man's Burden is when they think they have to fix every different culture and race. The white people actually thought that they were helping the other cultures and races by changing them into 'white' people. In the movie Avatar, they mentioned White Man's Burden but they never actually show it. The 'sky people' build schools to get the NA'VI to learn English and to learn how the 'sky people' live. There is also Ethnocentrism because the 'sky people' think they are better than the NA'VI and that the humans can take the NA'VI's resources.

Acculturation, Cultural Contact, and Colonialism are all very similar. Without Cultural Contact we cannot have Acculturation. In the movie Avatar and in history all three of these things have happened. In the movie they don't show when the 'Sky people' come to Pandora and make a colony but it does show the colony after they have built it. The 'Sky People' set up schools and hospitals to try and get the NA'VI to learn how the 'Sky People' speak and heal themselves. When the Europeans came to North America they discovered a new culture (First Natives), the Europeans set up colonies and learned the Natives secrets. They began trading the Natives pots and other useful items for beaver pelts. As time went on the Europeans forced the Natives to give up their culture and become European. The present time is very different, cultures get together and share ideas and practice their beliefs without being marginalized and ‘put down’.

            In history there has been many cultures the have been marginalized. If we look at early history you see a trend. Every culture thought they were superior to every other culture, and if you weren’t part of a certain culture you were considered ‘Evil’ and you had to be punished. In the movie Avatar the ‘Sky People’ pushed the NA’VI aside by destroying their home and slaughtering lots of them in order of obtaining a mineral called unobtanium which is worth millions of dollars.

In the history of our world we have encountered many hardships and we are guaranteed to have more in the future. If you compare our worlds past, present, and future to the movie Avatar, you notice a lot of similarities. I have seen the movie Avatar a couple times, but the time I watched it in class I noticed a lot more similarities and messages that that I didn’t see before.