Avatar and the True Defenders of the Land

rabble.ca - Ben Powless

 After seeing the film Avatar, the recent release by James Cameron dealing with allegorical Indigenous Peoples on an alien planet that humans seek to colonize, displace and finally eliminate in order to access the rich resources in their territories, a few reflections emerge. The first is a more than passing resemblance to the actual reality of Indigenous Peoples in Canada and beyond, the bounty of whose land and resources have cost them great suffering at the hands of colonizers and would-be-saviours. The second interesting element is to reflect on the state of actual Indigenous-colonizer relations, and the state of Indigenous resistance to the colonizing project.

It is clear that the government is engaged in a head-on collision course to extinguish Aboriginal rights, to continue the work of assimilation, and expand the economic, environmental and cultural colonialism that Canada's history is based upon. Vancouver this November saw the gathering of a number of the Indigenous communities and leaders across the country that have banded together to confront the rising tide of colonialism coming from government and aided by its corporate partners. These attacks on Indigenous rights and cultures across Canada have sparked the beginning of a new grassroots movement across Canada, with the goal of connecting Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, under the banner of a group referred to as the "Defenders of the Land."

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