![]() CRUM, Director, Division of Mining and Reclamation, and West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, Appellees Below, Appellants. I’m hoping to work with some of the people I’ve heard from on an essay that explores the objections to the movie in more detail.671 S.E.2d 464(2008) WACO OIL AND GAS COMPANY, INC., Appellant Below, Appellee My intention was never to do this, and I’m so grateful for the thoughtful discourse that’s followed and the opportunity to learn more. I can absolutely understand this and I’m truly sorry if my piece caused anger or sadness by neglecting this point. I’ve learned from so many of the responses that many people feel it was egregious for Disney to take Pocahontas, a real person who was treated shamefully by the English settlers, kidnapped, and forced into marriage, and fictionalize her story to the point where it became a romance and a tale ostensibly promoting equality between races. What I didn’t read so much about, and what I understand now is felt by many people still, is the anger at the fact that this movie was ever made. I did research into how the film was received at the time, and found two critiques of it from a Native American perspective-the statement from Powhatan Nation, and the op-ed in The Los Angeles Times, both of which I quoted in the piece. ![]() I find it hard to imagine a major children’s entertainment corporation could make a film like that today-one that promotes an environmentalist agenda and focuses on a strong female character considering her independence-without sparking outrage in some circles. My piece was intended primarily to look at how that came about. Then, after doing some research, I learned that Pocahontas was only the seventh animated Disney film based on a female heroine in more than half a century, and the first film based on a character of color, which I thought was intriguing. The Disney character of Pocahontas seemed to be different from many other cartoon heroines of the time, and it made me want to explore her place in the canon, and how it might have influenced Disney heroines to come. The idea for the piece came about because I was rewatching the movie after many, many years and I was struck by how original it was in a number of ways. ![]() It is the Western lens that sees a progressive narrative in the way the settlers of Disney’s movie are mocked (but eventually befriended), the way Pocahontas rejects a voyage overseas (but was in reality kidnapped-and in the sequel, even this part of the story is made family-friendly and song-worthy), and the way she chooses family over love (when in reality her “choice” was anything but). ![]() Disney’s Pocahontas gives just enough of a flogging to the “real” bad guys to leave the non-native viewers coming away feeling as though they’ve done the good work of recognizing their own faults, while the pain of forced assimilation and erasure continues for the Powhatan Nation and others. Yes, there is visibility in telling their stories, but it is a tainted visibility, a false reality rendered through the dominant culture, which seeks to ameliorate, always, the horrific methods by which they came to occupy an entire nation’s worth of landmass. Both Pocahontas and Sacagawea are often held up as heroines in the Western perspective, their stories reduced to kinder details rather than serving the interest of the dominant culture. I’ve struggled with Disney’s Pocahontas as a source of pain and stereotype.
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