I think, for white Americans, the indigenous peoples they displaced to colonize what would become the United States aren’t real people. Instead, they are supplemental creatures in a myth of American exceptionalism: the wolf that eats grandma; the wind at the door. They are props for enlightenment, triggers of guilt. Once conquered through disease, genocide, broken treaties, and other nasty tricks born of avarice and cupidity,

  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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    20 days ago

    In 2010, Cameron told THE GUARDIAN why he wanted to make these movies:

    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.

    Wow…