Welcome to a new feature--The Ridiculously Maddening Quote of the Day! Today's inaugural quote comes to us from James Cameron, director and screenwriter of Avatar (maybe you've heard of him?).
Quote comes from this article, talking about his activism and involvement with indigenous peoples in Brazil:
"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."Wow, James Cameron. Wow. So, the contemporary Lakota are "hopeless" and a "dead-end society"? and the generations of fighting against colonialism and continued oppression weren't and aren't fighting hard enough? Talk about ignorance. He makes it seem like the Lakota just rolled over and let their land be taken away. Couldn't be further from the truth.
Ugh. So hear that Natives? We should have just fought harder, and the state of our Native nations would be different. right.
Here's the original article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/18/avatar-james-cameron-brazil-dam
(Thanks Katie!)
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