Explained: Native Americans boycott James Cameron's 'horrible & racist' 'Avatar The Way of Water'

James Cameron's science-fiction action-adventure epic 'Avatar: The Way of Water' is by far the biggest film in the world right now. It has in less than a week's time surpassed the $500 million mark, an impressive sum for a sequel to a film that came out 13 years ago. Well, that is Cameron's magic. The filmmaker is not just the best crafter of spectacle in the business, he is also a canny marketer, spouting deliberately controversial statements to keep himself and his projects in online and media discourse. However, the film, much like the original, has attracted criticism from Native Americans, the Maori, other indigenous peoples around the world, and social activists. They — among other things — accuse Cameron of the 'White Saviour Complex'.

What is 'Avatar' all about?

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'Avatar' and its recently released sequel, are science-fiction films with adventure and fantasy elements. It's 2154. The story is set on Pandora, a habitable moon of a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system. The lush, verdant world is home to the Na'vi, a blue-hued, tall, and lithe people who have an intimate connection with the natural world. Even their deity — Eywa — is a personification of nature. A powerful organisation called the Resources Development Administration with a monopoly on resources on Pandora runs things on the world, with permission from the Interplanetary Commerce Administration in perpetuity.

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Chief among the said resources is a mineral called Unobtanium, a transparent name as Pandora is its only known source. Unobtanium helps run the rapid transit system developed by RDA that spans the whole globe back on earth. The trouble is, vast deposits of Unobtanium lie beneath the Home Tree, a skyscraper-sized tree whose huge branches are home to the Omaticaya clan, for whom it is also sacred.

Our hero is Sam Worthington's paraplegic marine Jake Sully who is invited by the RDA to replace his twin brother as an Avatar. Avatars are specially built bodies made to resemble the Na'vi. They can be remotely controlled by a human and are supposed to help the RDA infiltrate the Omaticaya clan and somehow urge them to move from the Home Tree. The other option is an all-out assault from RDA's private military.

Sully, initially doing whatever he is told, falls in love with the Omaticaya chief's daughter Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and then the simple, peace-loving ways of the Na'vi. He and other sympathetic humans side with the Na'vi in the final battle against the RDA, who are defeated and sent back to earth.

In the sequel, the humans, including old foes in new skins, are back with a vengeance, and Jake and Neytiri, who have children to take care of now, flee and find shelter with the Reef People, who unlike the Omaticaya have amphibious qualities. Eventually, Avatars, inhabited by soldiers in employ of the RDa, attack and the Na'vi win again.

Is 'Avatar' franchise just tells a story or is there a deeper meaning?

No. If it isn't obvious until now... 'Avatar' movies and by extension the franchise as a whole are meant to be a thinly-veiled metaphor for the genocide and repression Europeans inflicted on Native Americans as well as indigenous populations in Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere. It isn't even subtle. Like the Na'vi, many of these tribes practiced Animism and held nature in particular reverence. They use bows and arrows, wear feathers in their hair, and war paint on their faces.

Eywa is nothing other than the spiritual power that animates animals, trees, and every living thing worshipped by many native peoples around the world.

Cameron has not been shy about what he's saying through these movies. In 2021, he admitted the unsubtlety of the metaphor underpinning this story. As per Business Insider, he said back in 2012, "Avatar is a science fiction retelling of the history of North and South America in the early colonial period. Avatar very pointedly made reference to the colonial period in the Americas, with all its conflict and bloodshed between the military aggressors from Europe and the indigenous peoples. Europe equals Earth. The native Americans are the Na’vi. It’s not meant to be subtle.”

So why is so much criticism levelled at Cameron?

Highlighting injustices done to the indigenous peoples by the hands of Europeans in a blockbuster cinema has to be a good thing, right? Right? Well, yes and no. But it's all too simplistic and sweeping. The films' main message appears to be something like "racism and greed are bad. Stay close to nature. Oh, and beware of the perils of technology". And? Yes, the natural world should be preserved, or we are doomed. Yes, the rights of the indigenous should never have been infringed. Their land should never have been stolen. But we all knew that already, didn't we?

Beyond that, there is something worse. The phrase 'white guilt' is frequently used in connection with 'Avatar', and for good reason. It is like Cameron regrets what people of European origin did to the natives, and wishes to project his guilt onto the world through half-billion-dollar movies. The film did not need Jake at all. A native Na'vi could have been made the hero of the rebellion against the humans, and that would not have changed the main story at all. But of course, a white guy had to be inserted to serve as a "perspective" and it is ultimately he who leads the battle — despite being one among the Na'vi for only a few months. This, critics allege, white guilt fantasy.

Both films have also been accused of cultural appropriation, considering the cultural features the Na'vi and Native Americans share. In 'The Way of Water', it was even more blatant, with the culture of the Metkayina Clan closely resembling the Maori, the indigenous Polynesian people of mainland New Zealand.

If all that was not enough, in 2010 Cameron said something that did not exactly help his cause. He had been protesting against the building of the giant Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the Amazon. The dam's construction threatened the way of life of the Brazilian Xingu people. While speaking to The Guardian, he said, “A real-life Avatar confrontation is in progress. 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.”

Many took that to mean that he was suggesting that the Lakota should have their colonisers harder. Ouch.

What exactly are the critics saying?

Yuè Begay, a Navajo artist, has taken Cameron to task recently, and she has been most eloquent with respect to the sequel. She called for a boycott against 'The Way of Water', accusing Cameron of 'blueface'. On Twitter, she wrote, "Do NOT watch Avatar: The Way of Water. Join Natives & other Indigenous groups around the world in boycotting this horrible & racist film. Our cultures were appropriated in a harmful manner to satisfy some 🏳 man's savior complex. No more Blueface! Lakota people are powerful!"

In an open letter, she wrote, "This is unacceptable! Black and Indigenous people are more than enough to play aliens based on us. We should’ve been the ones whose faces and voices appeared on the screen. We are the experts in portraying our hurt, suffering, and more importantly, our resilience.

My Lakota relatives were one of the most powerful people the United States came across. They did fight. They won. Their ancestors would be proud of their descendants for thriving, living, and just existing with their culture intact. But you do not show that in your films. Instead, you choose to show or glorify colonialism. White people being aliens based on actual Indigenous people. That’s colonialism. That’s colonization.

Make it right. Hire us! Hire our experts in your writing rooms, as your consultants, as your talent, and as your leaders. Stop trying to lead. You are NOT our leader. You are an outsider. A guest to our lands and culture. Act like it.”

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