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Avatar Essay Questions

750 Words3 Pages

NDW4M-AVATAR
James Cameron’s epic adventure film Avatar runs in direct parallels with various concepts and ideas discussed in our course thus far. Throughout the film, evidence of invasion, assimilation, colonization, and intrusion of capitalism. The film also relates to how Canada has affected its indigenous in recent history, occurrences of mistreatment still happening today. In the very first scenes of the movie, one comes to understand that humans have landed and set camp on planet Pandora. This is already the first example of foreign settlement and colonization as humans landed on Pandora and immediately claimed land as it were their own property, not thinking about the indigenous Navii. Main character Jake Sully visits a Navii school …show more content…

The Navii started war with the humans, in a fight for their land and their tranquility. What was an eye opener to me was how the Navii sent all the “bad” humans back to earth peacefully, without killing them. I believe this to represent the justice the indigenous have all fought for all around the world, and how they don’t need to kill others, they simply want to live on with their culture. A common trait with indigenous peoples around the world is that they feel a special connection to their environment, they do not waste nor abuse precious resources. Some cultures of indigenous tribes believe certain items of nature to have a certain god associated to it (god of corn etc.). The Navii also displayed this similar trait as they show a literal “bond” to certain structures, plants and animals via the tip of their braids. Jake Sully bonded to horse-like animals in the movie, in order to ride them, he also bonded with the sacred tree of eywa, and heard the voices of Navii ancestors. Unfortunately, in the film and in real life we have disrupted this bond, by interfering with nature for our own profit, whether in mining valuable resources (evident in Avatar and Blood Diamond) or over-running sacred burial grounds for entertainment venues (the Mohawk-Quebec

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