Indigenous Activist Organizations Encourage Fans to Boycott 'Avatar: The Way of Water'

Director James Cameron is accused of appropriating various indigenous cultures in the highly-anticipated new sequel.

Fans and moviegoers alike are being urged to boycott the newly-released sequel film, Avatar: The Way of Water, which indigenous activists are calling "racist" and "appropriated." 

The highly-anticipated film—which premiered in theaters on Dec. 16—is facing criticism from a revived social media campaign that initially arose over the first Avatar film in 2009. The controversy was once again ignited this week, after "anti-indigenous" comments made in a past interview by the films' director, James Cameron, resurfaced. 

Yuè Begay, a Navajo artist and co-chair of Indigenous Pride Los Angeles, took to Twitter over the weekend to condemn Cameron's film and encourage would-be moviegoers to avoid seeing it, which has already grossed $300 million internationally, according to the Los Angeles Times. 

"Do NOT watch Avatar: The Way of Water," Begay began the message, which has since received over 46,000 likes. "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 🏳️ [white] man's savior complex," she continued, while sharing multiple infographics about the cause, including a copy of Cameron's previous statements about Indigenous tribes. 

The 2010 story from The Guardian discussed Cameron's opposition to the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the Amazon, which has caused thousands of people to be displaced. In the article, he explained that his time with Amazon tribes prompted him to think about the history of Indigenous people in North America, which ended up inspiring the script for Avatar. 

"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," the “Titanic” director said at the time, while admitting, "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." 

But Indigenous activists and social media protestors are now calling out Cameron for likening the story of the sci-fi film to that of the Lakota Sioux, despite there being no actual representation of the tribe in the film. Additionally, none of the cast members are Indigenous people, which Begay calls "a form of racist caricature known as 'Blueface.'"

"Blueface" was coined following the 2009 film, after Cameron was accused of "favoring non-Indigenous folks to play Na'vi, an alien race based on many Indigenous cultures he appropriated from," according to Begay's posts. The term refers to a creator who "appropriates many non-White cultures, blends them together indiscriminately or blatantly, and has White people play or voice them using fiction as a medium to necessitate and validate their worldbuilding." 

Begay continues the description of "Blueface" as "a combination of Redface, Blackface, Yellowface, and other racist tools creators use to justify not centering or validating the experiences, voices, and bodies of Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized People of Color." 

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To rectify the issue to some extent, Begay is asking that fans avoid seeing the new film, while also providing ways for more people to support Indigenous people around the world. 

Begay also shared a lengthy message addressed directly to Cameron via Instagram, calling on the film mogul to stop purporting himself as a leader of Indigenous people and to instead hire Indigenous people on his projects.