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In Settler Aesthetics, Mishuana Goeman examines Terrence Malick’s film The New World and exposes settler-colonial erasure and violence against Native peoples.

Image courtesy of interviewee. December 6, 2023

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Ana Goman, a Tonawanda Bando Seneca and an assistant professor in Native American Studies, reflects on her experiences and the impact of the Pocahontas narrative, particularly in relation to the 2005 film "The New World" by Terence Malick. Goman discusses the mythic status of Pocahontas in American culture and how it shapes the identities of Indigenous women. Despite being initially reluctant to engage with the film, she felt compelled to analyze its portrayal of Native peoples, given the involvement of Native actors and consultants.

While recognizing the film's aesthetic beauty, Goman critiques its failure to authentically represent Indigenous voices and experiences. She expresses anger at how the film privileges a settler narrative while erasing Indigenous historical political structures and ecological knowledge. Goman emphasizes the importance of understanding Pocahontas’ true story and its implications for contemporary Indigenous identity and political recognition.

Her book aims to unpack this myth and explore the intersection of Indigenous studies with broader narratives of colonialism. She highlights the historical erasure of Indigenous peoples in American society and advocates for a deeper understanding of the political ramifications of such representations. Goman’s work encourages viewers to critically engage with the cultural narratives surrounding Pocahontas and to recognize their real-life consequences for Indigenous communities today, especially regarding issues like federal recognition and access to resources. Ultimately, she seeks to foster a more nuanced understanding of Indigenous identity that moves beyond mythologization, affirming the complex realities of Indigenous peoples and their histories.

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My name is Ana Goman.

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I'm Tonawanda Bando Seneca,

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and my father was an enrolled hot clan

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member of that nation.

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Uh, so in some ways that is part of what motivates this, is

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that you can't grow up

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as a young native woman without hearing the story

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of Pocahontas being called Pocahontas,

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or not being called Pocahontas.

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So what comes out of that is there's this like kind

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of mythic figure that looms large over our identities,

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who we are, how that functions.

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And so in this way, when the New World came out,

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which is a Terence Malik film,

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and it came out in 2005, I, at

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that point was an assistant professor at Dartmouth College

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in Native American Studies.

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I actually teach the film course

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in Native American studies at the time there,

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and I knew I would be asked about this movie.

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I knew that my students would be like,

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what do you think about it?

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Other professors would be, what do you think about it?

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That it would be, that aspect

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that I'd be kind of targeted for.

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I really had no desire to see a Pocahontas movie.

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It, it becomes like one of those, things that

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you just kind of shake your head at in,

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in many ways when you're,

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when you're a young woman growing up,

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because you hear so much about it.

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And my being a light-skinned Indian also, it,

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it would be used and targeted against you.

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You don't look like Pocahontas.

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I spent a year abroad when I was an undergraduate in

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England, actually, and the whole thing there was like,

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do you know any real Indians?

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'cause for them the real Indian in Bo Islands,

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because of, you know, London has such a,

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such a romanticization

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because that's where she spent her final days.

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She's buried at Graves end.

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And so there becomes this kind of mythic quality to it.

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So when the movie came out, again, I wasn't sure I wanted

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to see it, but at that point, I had heard

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so much about the native actors that were doing it,

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the native consultants, the fact that the Virginia,

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tribes were also, involved in the making

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and the authentication of the movie.

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I was like, okay, I'll go and check this out.

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See what settler, you know,

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I knew it was a settler narrative.

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I was hoping Malik,

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who hadn't produced a film in over 10 years, right?

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That was also being lotted this, you know, new,

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new Hollywood cinema.

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God is making this movie, this mythic movie on something

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that is, you know, the form some of the formation

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of indigenous feminisms I got in there,

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and in the first role of the screen credits,

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I just had this moment of kind of rage

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because it was, a map.

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It was the Chesapeake Bay map that John Smith had done

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through his explorations and travels.

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And so it kind of unraveled the map, right?

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And you saw this kind of drawing of the map as it went,

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As though the land was composed of para Ellis

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as though there, that what's Terra Ellis is no man's

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governance, right?

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But as though there wasn't all this like massive,

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traditional ecological knowledges or knowledges of the land,

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or even political governance over the territory.

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Now, pal Hadden was super strong, right?

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Um, a as, as a leader.

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And, those communities had depths

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and depths of knowledge over their waterways.

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It seemed, you know, they had their own maps.

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And this related to the book I was also writing at the time

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called Mark My Words,

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native Woman remapping our territories.

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So, which is really takes on geography.

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So with that, I, you know, I sat in the theater,

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it was super long.

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It was like two and a half hours. It was lyrical.

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It was beautiful. I mean,

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Malik does a landscape like nobody else, right?

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And, KKA Kilter just was an amazing actress.

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You know, there was some, there was some really amazing,

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aesthetically beautiful scenery in the movie,

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but halfway through I looked after my rage.

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I was like, at, at everything,

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because the narrative didn't change

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and you couldn't actually hear what she was saying.

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And it was like, I do also do a lot with poetry,

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but the poetry was kind of nonsensical

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and it just kind of went through this.

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Now there's very little Algonquin,

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even though I had heard they employed a language teacher,

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there was, most of the, the narrative was driven by

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what you already knew, right?

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You kind of had to know the narrative, of course,

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which everybody knows.

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We don't even know when we first learned the narrative

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of Pocahontas, but we kind of all know it

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because we grow up with it.

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It's, it's a, it's a foundational myth in American society.

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So I put this like story in another talk that I gave,

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and, that rant got out to the indigenous film,

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series, editors, Randolph Lewis

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and David Shorter, which is a great series

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for indigenous film that gives

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the background and everything.

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Um, so that, that kind of comes out.

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And then David asked me to write this book,

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and that was years ago when it first came out in like 2006.

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Um, it took me a while

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because it wasn't necessarily, I didn't wanna wrestle

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as an indigenous feminist with Pocahontas.

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I just didn't wanna do that.

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Uh, but I guess it was inevitable

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and it eventually I found a way in,

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and, that is kind of how the book came to be from

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that first reaction in the most colonial

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of theaters in Hanover, New Hampshire, right?

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Which has its own mythic Indian kind of element as well.

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So, well, you know, that was hard

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because a, a substantial part was actually written into

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co written through Covid.

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But, I actually did a lot

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of archival research looking at,

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the latter part when we get into politics

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of recognition in the book.

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Um, what eventually happens in this narrative is

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that in 2015, the p**n who are

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Pocahontas, tribal nation of what she belongs,

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receive recognition.

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So that recognition is done.

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And so that seemed to be the moment, on stage

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to really finally finish it

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and do the finishing push, you know, the results.

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So the 45th president

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who calls Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas,

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and then the whole narrative comes up again

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and the whole myth, so archival research

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of really trying to fill out the gendered aspect.

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Luckily, you know, it was a well-worn path

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historically about the actual myth.

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And that is, Helen Roundtree, who's approved

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by the Virginia Council of Tribes, undertook that research,

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as did Camille Thompson and,

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and another, Karen.

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Um, and within those kind of, leeways

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of those really brilliant historians doing that research,

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you know, the myth of course became problematic.

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My take on the exploration

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through the archive was thinking about all the different

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ways the trope has been used in a kind

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of historical literary and filmic way.

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And, thinking about all the ways the,

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the narrative has been reiterated through different venues

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and genres, right?

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All the way out from Peggy Lee doing, fever

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by Pocahontas, which just, you know,

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that song is very catchy and it's really wonderful,

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but if you listen to it, it still vibes in that myth, right?

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So that was kind of my take in, in into it.

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What are those imperial circuits that exist there?

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And so that's, that's kind of how I gathered it.

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But also, I, I looked a around, I did a lot of research.

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I talked to the Virginia Council of Tribes,

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li the librarian there.

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I followed their guidelines.

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They had a guidelines about

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how they would like their tribe written about,

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and I think that's very important

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for anybody doing research in indigenous studies

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to get things right.

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For instance, Palatan wasn't achieve.

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And there's a lot of, various guidelines they have

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for writing about this, because it is so popularized.

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I give that to my students

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as well when they write about this particular book.

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'cause for them, you know, Pocahontas wasn't a princess.

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And so for them, it is easy to kind of slip into that

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because it's so embedded in settler common sense.

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So those are kind of what I undertook for one thing.

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Um, I talk about this, it's, it's like kind of the precipice

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of the spectacle of the originary myth

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that is the originary myth of the United States.

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And its exceptionalism. It's a repetition of images

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of first encounter that is only leads to downfall, right?

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What people forget in this time span is games town isn't

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established until 1609.

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And if Columbus, you know, landed in 1592,

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1492, sorry, there's years between that England

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and other European encounters could not establish

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A colon in the US 200 years.

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So you can think about that importance, right?

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But what people often think is, think of it

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as a nie VD Vache kind of thing.

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They came, they saw, they conquered as though

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that was a small time span.

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So this kind of gets at some of the settler temporalities

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that, that exist by continuing to promote this, this film

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and the settler aesthetics that also involved, in that.

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So it downplays those years of con colonial conflict

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and indigenous resistance

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and draws the viewer into the movie in the narrative itself.

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These aesthetics are critical reflections on how settler art

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assigns different values.

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It creates and imagines worlds,

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and thus enables the viewer to lament the loss,

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the downfall, the loss of this beautiful landscape,

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people who lived with the Earth, et cetera.

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It allows all that loss

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to be addressed without being accountable

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to the afterlife of colonialism.

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So when the story and images are directed with such beauty

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as Malik Malik has that deep talent to do,

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we experience the feeling of possibility in the encounter

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and the feeling that our present didn't have to be this way,

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but unfortunately it is.

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So the settler aesthetic merges kind of with that

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of the sublime here

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and evokes a greatness at the precipice of encounter.

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So the encounter was in fact violent,

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but in mal fashion, all that violence kind

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of shows off screen, right?

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We see this in Badlands Days of Heaven and,

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and most of his films,

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but it gets built up throughout the film outside these,

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like various beautiful frames of beauty that we see.

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His soundtrack also invites Visual Wonder, invites us

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to mourn the loss of the pristine, asserting Indian death

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and destruction is just unfortunate.

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The celluloid kind of way

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that this is done obscures the violence

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and impact of dispossession

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and continues in those settler destructions.

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But even more than that, you asked about racial capitalism.

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What it sits up, what the story

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of Pocahontas sits up is a Pocahontas exception

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during Jim Crow era and post-slavery.

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And this is where Walter Ashby Cher,

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and this comes in later in my book in chapter,

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four when we, when we talk about it.

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But what it sits up is this way that, erasure

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of Indians and and capital where you could be colored

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or white ker goes back

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and changes all of the, the vital statistics.

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He was in charge for 36 years

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of the vital statistics in the state of Virginia, right?

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And this gets later, we could think about this

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as loving versus Virginia, which is deeply tied

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to this movie in some ways

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because, she was also indigenous,

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which often gets overlooked in the black white dynamic.

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But it's black indigenous dynamic that becomes part

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of a part of that eugenics movement in the 1930s.

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So the Pocahontas exception allowed for any descendancy

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of Pocahontas family,

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which were hugely mass landowners since 1609,

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and really proliferated in those old school families,

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to escape being classified as colored in that sense,

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and thus losing any ability to own property,

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but only to be property.

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And so, there be, that ties into the racial capitalism,

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this Pocahontas exception, but also gets into nobility.

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But as the monkey are clear on saying,

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and this, this, I was lucky enough to attend,

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British Museum on the 400th anniversary as,

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as the monkey say in writing, in,

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in various newspaper accounts

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and various interviews that he had done.

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And in the, and what I saw at the British Museum

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that Pocahontas was one out of hundreds of women.

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She wasn't even the most one that fought the most

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for her community and people,

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but the, the lauded ness of it is largely extended

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because of these property rights

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that are enveloped in this myth of the native grandmother,

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but also in the Pocahontas exception, which allowed people

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to escape the eugenics.

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So there's an afterlife of Pocahontas

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that I think needs addressing in terms of racial capitalism

12:59.105 --> 13:00.925
and in terms of the way later,

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even though the monkey had the oldest established

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reservation in the us, again, we're not recognized till 2015

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that, they began their petition in the 1980s.

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Even with all that, there becomes a way

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that the changing of those vital statistics

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and records deeply came into play

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because it was hard to go back

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and trace all the damage

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that PLR had done over those 36 years in those eugenics

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movements of erasing native people through vital records.

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I kind of, I work with Patrick Wolf a lot.

13:33.325 --> 13:35.565
I think Patrick Wolf was one of, there's other people

13:35.565 --> 13:37.645
that were doing, settler colonialism,

13:37.645 --> 13:41.045
largely in the Jewish context and in other European context.

13:41.505 --> 13:45.485
But Patrick Wolf was the first one to kind, work

13:45.595 --> 13:50.365
with indigenous studies in, in that, he came to us,

13:50.425 --> 13:51.885
and of course we had been discu.

13:52.145 --> 13:54.805
We have, we had an indigenous, the we heres

13:54.805 --> 13:56.845
and indigenous studies, of

13:56.845 --> 13:58.365
what not everybody of course is indigenous.

13:58.625 --> 14:02.205
We had been working on settler colonialism for years.

14:02.385 --> 14:04.125
It just didn't quite have that name.

14:04.825 --> 14:08.605
So there's a particular way that,

14:10.035 --> 14:13.965
that settler colonialism is not about the event,

14:14.225 --> 14:15.285
but about the structure.

14:15.665 --> 14:17.205
Now, this is particularly important here

14:17.205 --> 14:19.405
because it's not about the founding of Jamestown,

14:19.405 --> 14:20.805
which becomes the event.

14:20.945 --> 14:22.805
And now we can move on from

14:22.805 --> 14:26.565
that past in which Pocahontas marries into whiteness in

14:26.805 --> 14:29.085
European, this and that forms Americanness, right?

14:29.505 --> 14:31.645
So in some ways, this story itself

14:32.525 --> 14:36.245
structures the sit the situation with settler colonialism,

14:36.835 --> 14:38.725
such as pluck being able

14:38.725 --> 14:43.285
to think about native people vanishing into whiteness or,

14:43.465 --> 14:47.085
or being, consumed, into,

14:47.235 --> 14:49.165
into blackness in this, in this sense.

14:49.505 --> 14:51.085
So there becomes this particular,

14:51.415 --> 14:54.005
particular settler structures that set up.

14:54.265 --> 14:56.285
Now settler aesthetics are wrapped in those

14:56.345 --> 14:57.565
logics of elimination.

14:58.305 --> 15:01.805
Um, the aesthetics of American colonialism and film is part

15:01.805 --> 15:04.765
and parcel of the settler foundations that built up the myth

15:04.785 --> 15:06.085
of American exceptionalism

15:06.625 --> 15:09.125
and dominance that's rather un faltering.

15:09.745 --> 15:12.445
So it's the, what it is, is the ongoing condition

15:12.465 --> 15:14.565
of settler occupation, of native land

15:14.825 --> 15:18.365
and occupation, often pictured mono monumentalize

15:18.785 --> 15:21.165
and enforced by the containment of native bodies

15:21.425 --> 15:23.685
and the glorification of a colonial past.

15:23.985 --> 15:25.005
And this glorification

15:25.005 --> 15:28.405
of this originary myth comes into play with how we think

15:28.405 --> 15:31.405
through gender, how we think through masculinity

15:31.465 --> 15:32.565
and the film itself.

15:32.825 --> 15:36.205
You know, there's, there's some amazing male actors whose

15:36.205 --> 15:39.845
scenes are cut on the, on the, on the floor,

15:41.185 --> 15:43.525
by Malick during, during the editing process.

15:44.145 --> 15:47.045
Uh, west Stuy, who's like a beloved,

15:47.365 --> 15:49.605
American Indian actor, actually has,

15:50.065 --> 15:51.885
has many quotes in, in the book.

15:52.005 --> 15:54.045
I address this, where malick's great at

15:54.205 --> 15:55.445
shooting brass, right?

15:55.905 --> 16:00.405
Uh, so it becomes part of that parcel of what gets edited,

16:00.405 --> 16:01.645
whether, you know, in,

16:01.705 --> 16:05.125
in some ways the film just sit situates itself in those

16:05.125 --> 16:07.965
ongoing settler aesthetics where, you know,

16:07.965 --> 16:11.085
you're a good Indian if you work on behalf of this

16:11.145 --> 16:13.965
and you're a bad Indian or a Savage Indian if you,

16:14.025 --> 16:16.925
if you do not work on behalf of creating American Empire.

16:17.465 --> 16:19.725
So those are kind of the settler aesthetics that we see.

16:19.825 --> 16:21.805
We see landscape, the, I mean,

16:21.805 --> 16:24.565
he concentrates on landscape and the soundtrack.

16:25.105 --> 16:27.685
So meticulously, Malik actually went

16:27.865 --> 16:30.725
and found recordings of extinct birds, birds

16:30.725 --> 16:33.165
that are now extinct because of development in Virginia.

16:33.625 --> 16:35.805
So some of the birds, you hear the bird sounds

16:35.805 --> 16:40.105
of extinct birds, but he juxtaposes that with Bogner, right?

16:40.195 --> 16:42.505
Which is a, which is a soundtrack of conquest.

16:42.885 --> 16:45.905
So we see this kind of ongoing settler aesthetics

16:45.905 --> 16:47.945
and how music and nature is used

16:48.745 --> 16:51.145
landscapes asserted gender definitions

16:51.145 --> 16:52.785
of indigeneity are asserted.

16:53.165 --> 16:56.505
But what gets evacuated here is political governance

16:56.565 --> 16:57.825
of indigenous nations.

16:58.365 --> 17:01.465
And that's the real problem that indigenous

17:01.725 --> 17:04.345
and our ongoing life in futurity.

17:04.525 --> 17:07.505
For those who don't know the actual story of Pocahontas,

17:07.665 --> 17:11.545
I try, I used as much as I could from, I,

17:12.015 --> 17:14.905
drew on Karen Wood a lot, who's a beautiful poet,

17:15.325 --> 17:17.585
and she was also chief of the Monica Nation.

17:18.145 --> 17:21.105
I drew on her work a a lot throughout.

17:21.485 --> 17:23.665
Um, and I look at the consultants

17:23.725 --> 17:25.585
and I looked at reactions to the film.

17:26.105 --> 17:29.625
I hope what they take is that these films themselves, while

17:30.275 --> 17:32.785
Pocahontas seems like a trivial aspect, right?

17:32.925 --> 17:34.425
It seems like a Halloween costume.

17:34.725 --> 17:38.625
Why do native people get so upset about the appropriation

17:38.685 --> 17:40.225
of a Pocahontas or,

17:40.445 --> 17:42.105
or these kind of remarks made

17:42.105 --> 17:43.945
by certain political figures, right?

17:44.215 --> 17:47.505
That are very derogatory, even in situations

17:47.505 --> 17:48.865
where he, where he

17:48.865 --> 17:50.965
Was talking to Navajo veterans

17:51.305 --> 17:54.205
and he brought up this very derogatory, I mean,

17:55.255 --> 17:57.825
what I hope is that they'll understand she comes from a

17:57.985 --> 18:00.665
grounded politics in a specific nation,

18:01.045 --> 18:02.465
in a specific community,

18:02.885 --> 18:07.105
and that, these kind of slights in the way

18:07.105 --> 18:10.785
that we view her are actually inappropriate.

18:11.205 --> 18:14.305
And it does have political and real life consequences.

18:14.685 --> 18:15.945
And just for your viewers

18:15.965 --> 18:18.585
who may not understand why recognition is so

18:19.445 --> 18:20.735
important, right?

18:21.285 --> 18:23.295
It's because that's what gives the ability

18:23.355 --> 18:27.055
for tribal nations to apply to federal GaN grants

18:27.515 --> 18:29.575
for the infrastructure of their communities.

18:30.095 --> 18:34.895
IE how water waste management Super Sun fund sites are

18:34.895 --> 18:35.935
cleaned up, well,

18:35.935 --> 18:38.895
hopefully cleaned up their US government's very bad at that.

18:39.355 --> 18:41.495
Um, but it allows for healthcare

18:41.675 --> 18:44.175
and education for tribal nations.

18:44.555 --> 18:48.015
And so this is what any city or state has,

18:48.275 --> 18:51.015
but reservations have some of the poorest infrastructure

18:51.275 --> 18:54.335
as well because of that continual application

18:54.635 --> 18:56.015
of needing to apply to grants.

18:56.315 --> 18:59.775
If you are not federally recognized, you do not have access

19:00.155 --> 19:03.815
to making sure your community is healthy and well.

19:04.235 --> 19:07.415
So the political implications here are we can view

19:07.625 --> 19:12.095
Pocahontas as this ungrounded unmoored figure,

19:12.755 --> 19:15.055
and use it and, and it gets used.

19:15.115 --> 19:17.975
The myth gets used to assert these structures

19:17.975 --> 19:19.175
of settler colonialism,

19:19.555 --> 19:23.335
but in reality, the impact of that really does have import

19:23.755 --> 19:27.535
for her, for all of our communities if we can't view it.

19:27.595 --> 19:31.695
So my hope is that people will view, these myths,

19:31.755 --> 19:34.895
really unpack them, rethink what it means to have a great,

19:35.025 --> 19:36.535
great grandmother

19:36.915 --> 19:39.455
and actually start to think about real life indigenous

19:39.515 --> 19:41.215
people in the sense.

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