The Guardian has this quote from James Cameron, director of the movie Avatar, which has been widely criticised as a White Saviour movie. (See our previous conversation on Avatar.)
Cameron said witnessing indigenous ceremonies and meetings in the Amazon had made him reflect on the plight of the North American Indians and inspired him to attempt to give the “global consciousness… a heads up”.
“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,” he said. “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.”
The article continues,
Not all Brazilians have taken kindly to Cameron’s engagement with the indigenous cause.
[via unfunny business]
Categories: media
Wonder Woman movie marketing machine tied up in knots 
So I only just discovered the Tomlin Rule 
Crunching numbers on the latest Oxfam report 
Hoyden About Town 
WTF? “Hey you native peoples, don’t you wish you fought a lot harder back then?”
WTF?
So it’s the Lakota Siouxs’ fault for not fighting harder? If they had fought harder but still ended up in the same position (cause they were seeing the future right) it would have been okay because at least then they could say they fought harder? And they were fighting the invisible unicorns of taking all your stuff and kicking you onto reservations?
I get what he is trying to do, but dude…
It’s not at all surprising that such ignorant comments about the oppression of native people came from the maker of Avatar.
Yeah, they just didn’t TRY hard enough, did they? If only one of the invading people had decided to join them; he (of course “he”!) would have organised them and lead them to victory, then becoming their king and marrying their beautiful princess.
Does this guy do anything that is not full of fail and lose? He’s like a living trainwreck at this point.
Not winning the Oscar reflects badly on him! If he had only tried harder…
Helen, that deserves an internets. Do you want a purple one, or the one wearing the Cthulhu costume?
Oh, Helen, that’s so beautiful 🙂
Thank you, thank you!! I want to thank my mum, the dogs…
Definitely the Cthulhu costume!
Mr. Cameron is an ignorant and narcisstic bastard. I am a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and we did fight hard, we won Red Cloud’s War and who killed your hero Custer? Oh yes that’s right, we did! If we could have seen in the future hundreds of years ago, then we would have stopped the Immigrants that you are from ever coming here in the first place; Unless you are Native American, not some wannabe claiming to be Cherokee then you are an immigrant, which brings me to my next issue of why the hell did you come here in the first place? Mr. Cameron you are a disgrace and a perfect example of all the stereotypical people in this world who are biased against those with a different skin color. So what if we live in poverty? I would think that after all we have been through we should be considered and we do consider ourselves as a strong nation. All the odds are pitted against us, everyone thinks that just because we get health care we have it made. Newsflash people our health care is so bad that the government spends more money annually on prisoners then they do us. We could sit in our hospital for six hours just to get tylenol. So excuse me if we aren’t as glamorous as Hollywood makes us out to be. If we are hopeless then why does the military continue to use our war tactics? Guerilla warfare was originally ours, if we are so hopeless and dead end then why steal our tactics? All in all this comment is a racial slur, you don’t see representatives from our tribe making comments about other races. We were put on this reservation and persecuted till the 1970’s yet we are still portrayed as savages of the West. Unfortunately we are still being persecuted when we leave this reservation. Everyone sees only what they want, I doubt you could live down here yourself. So until you come and walk a mile in our shoes you have no room to talk.