Avatar: A timely message of respect for native people and environment

With the U.N. climate control talks wrapping up in a fury of contentious meetings, the film Avatar is a reminder of the lessons to be learned from indigenous cultures and the respect and honor that must be paid to the environment. It's a welcome irony that a project using cutting edge special effects technology and blockbuster Hollywood plot lines is actually a moving treatise on our connection to nature, trees and community.

The film, set in the not-that-distant future, follows Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his intergalactic travels to Pandora. The alien planet is rich in a mineral, unobtainium, that will solve Earth's dire energy woes. The obstacle: a race of ten-foot blue, feline, humanoid creatures named the Na'vi whose tree-based home lies on top of a huge deposit of unobtainium.

Sully is part of the Avatar program, where he's given the opportunity to inhabit a genetically-engineered body that's a fusion of human and Na'vi DNA. His mission is to infiltrate the tribal people and manipulate them to leave their home for the sake of human interests. And if they won't leave, as made clear by his commander Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang), then they'll be removed by force.

Sully, once immersed into Na'vi culture, increasingly becomes one with their way of life, befriending and falling love with the chieftain's daugter Neytiri (Zoë Saldana) and learning how to become one with their forest, land and spirituality. Its' a familiar cinematic trope, the white male hero finding himself through native culture, and the ethnic analogies are truly cemented with all of the Na'vi main characters portrayed by actors of color (CCH Pounder, Wes Studi and Laz Alonso).

Interestingly, the blue animated creatures with tails and stripes are seen as far more centered and life-affirming than the film's humans. Cameron pays much attention to the beauty of Na'vi culture--the reverence of animals killed to sustain the tribe, the reliance on a female spiritual leader, the connection to a "goddess" tree, and the belief that energy used for life must be returned. (In many ways, Pandora's world is similar to the ideas found in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials fantasy book series, only hinted at by The Golden Compass movie tie-in.)

Cameron has shown interest in social issues in previous work. During Titanic's theatrical run, a colleague of mine with socialist leanings applauded the film, citing its powerful statements on class divisions. Avatar's commentary on the treatment of tribal indigenous cultures by the West for the sake of monetary greed and domination is pointed. Sully at one point holds up a military pamphlet in anger, decrying that military operations are generally ruses used to take from others whatever the powers that be want.

To be sure, this is a sci-fi action flick with a good ole boy protagonist meant to rake in a huge profit and achieve global domination. And many can just sit back and take in the glorious special effects where one will just start to believe that green and purple forest fluorescence is a natural, realistic thing.

Still, the messages for people of the African Diaspora are hard to miss, for we know all about hybridization. Jake Sully's new body is a fusion of cultures once separated by planets and space; collectively, our bodies are the product of cultures once separated by continents and sea. And while it's easy to readily align ourselves with the opportunities presented by military and corporate interests, perhaps the time has come to take lessons from a race of aliens who happily hug trees, and see where that takes us when ruminating about our own indigenous past and a more hopeful future.