3
1
Trailer
The Canadian filmmaker James Cameron released his first Avatar movie in 2009.
It takes place on the moon Pandora, far away from the solar system of the Earth,
and 150 years into the future. A mining company from Earth has established a base
from which it extracts a mineral called unobtanium. The mineral is transported to
Earth and used in energy production. It is indeed a profitable operation. At
Pandora, there are Na’vi, a human-like people. The Na’vi society has features
resembling many indigenous peoples today. They live in a close relationship with
their planet’s wild, beautiful and bountiful nature. The richest deposit of unobtanium lies beneath the home site of one of the Na’vi clans. Either through the use
of negotiation or force, the mining company therefore intends to remove the clan
and destroy the land upon which the Na’vi depend. The company has hired a small
group of scientists to carry out a participatory observation of the Na’vi in order to
find out what to do with them. This intention is hidden for the Na’vi. At the same
time, the company employs a large military force led by a colonel who is eager to
‘solve the problem’ by using force. The film begins when the marine veteran, Jake
Sully, arrives on Pandora to join the research group.
In the beginning, Jake is not at all accepted by the Na’vi, but his relationship
with them improves. The film has a romantic element when Jake falls in love with
the Na’vi princess Neytiri. When the colonel starts his armed attack on the Na’vi,
it is Jake who heads up the resistance. This seems to be an easy battle for the
Colonel, with his well- trained troops and high-tech military equipment against the
Na’vi, who appear to be a weak and ‘primitive’ people with bows and arrows. But
David was able to outwit Goliath, and in movies everything is possible. In Avatar,
Cameron has drawn his inspiration from film genres such as science fiction and war
films. The parallels to western films are also obvious, as this film reminds us of the
fights between cowboys and American Indians.
You may now start to wonder: Why do we begin this book with a science fiction
movie from outer space? Some may even argue that this is total nonsense, and there
is no connection whatsoever between political ecology and the film Avatar. Truly,
political ecology is a field of study and a research approach aimed at nonfiction
studies of human life in their environments on the real planet Earth. And as we
know today, there is no Planet B.
Nevertheless, we use the fiction movie about the struggle at Pandora as a ‘case’ to
introduce what we argue to constitute key building blocks of political ecology. Despite
being fiction, Avatar embraces a theme that political ecology often highlights. It is
about conflicts where local and sometimes indigenous communities are approached by
external actors who try to appropriate their land and natural resources.
Survival International (SI) is an organization for indigenous peoples. In a press
release when the first Avatar movie was launched, SI stated that ‘Avatar is real’.
SI’s director, Stephen Corry, said: ‘Like the Na’vi of “Avatar”, the world’s lastremaining tribal peoples – from the Amazon to Siberia – are also at risk of extinction, as their lands are appropriated by powerful forces for profit-making reasons
such as colonization, logging and mining.’ (Survival International 2010).
A man of the Penan people in Sarawak, Malaysia, made the following comment
to SI: ‘The Na’vi people in “Avatar” cry because their forest is destroyed. It’s the
Political Ecology on Pandora
1
Trailer
The Canadian filmmaker James Cameron released his first Avatar movie in 2009.
It takes place on the moon Pandora, far away from the solar system of the Earth,
and 150 years into the future. A mining company from Earth has established a base
from which it extracts a mineral called unobtanium. The mineral is transported to
Earth and used in energy production. It is indeed a profitable operation. At
Pandora, there are Na’vi, a human-like people. The Na’vi society has features
resembling many indigenous peoples today. They live in a close relationship with
their planet’s wild, beautiful and bountiful nature. The richest deposit of unobtanium lies beneath the home site of one of the Na’vi clans. Either through the use
of negotiation or force, the mining company therefore intends to remove the clan
and destroy the land upon which the Na’vi depend. The company has hired a small
group of scientists to carry out a participatory observation of the Na’vi in order to
find out what to do with them. This intention is hidden for the Na’vi. At the same
time, the company employs a large military force led by a colonel who is eager to
‘solve the problem’ by using force. The film begins when the marine veteran, Jake
Sully, arrives on Pandora to join the research group.
In the beginning, Jake is not at all accepted by the Na’vi, but his relationship
with them improves. The film has a romantic element when Jake falls in love with
the Na’vi princess Neytiri. When the colonel starts his armed attack on the Na’vi,
it is Jake who heads up the resistance. This seems to be an easy battle for the
Colonel, with his well- trained troops and high-tech military equipment against the
Na’vi, who appear to be a weak and ‘primitive’ people with bows and arrows. But
David was able to outwit Goliath, and in movies everything is possible. In Avatar,
Cameron has drawn his inspiration from film genres such as science fiction and war
films. The parallels to western films are also obvious, as this film reminds us of the
fights between cowboys and American Indians.
You may now start to wonder: Why do we begin this book with a science fiction
movie from outer space? Some may even argue that this is total nonsense, and there
is no connection whatsoever between political ecology and the film Avatar. Truly,
political ecology is a field of study and a research approach aimed at nonfiction
studies of human life in their environments on the real planet Earth. And as we
know today, there is no Planet B.
Nevertheless, we use the fiction movie about the struggle at Pandora as a ‘case’ to
introduce what we argue to constitute key building blocks of political ecology. Despite
being fiction, Avatar embraces a theme that political ecology often highlights. It is
about conflicts where local and sometimes indigenous communities are approached by
external actors who try to appropriate their land and natural resources.
Survival International (SI) is an organization for indigenous peoples. In a press
release when the first Avatar movie was launched, SI stated that ‘Avatar is real’.
SI’s director, Stephen Corry, said: ‘Like the Na’vi of “Avatar”, the world’s lastremaining tribal peoples – from the Amazon to Siberia – are also at risk of extinction, as their lands are appropriated by powerful forces for profit-making reasons
such as colonization, logging and mining.’ (Survival International 2010).
A man of the Penan people in Sarawak, Malaysia, made the following comment
to SI: ‘The Na’vi people in “Avatar” cry because their forest is destroyed. It’s the
Political Ecology on Pandora