How can there be so much that you don’t know?
~ from Disney’s Pocahontas
Before the area was ‘colonised’ by Europeans in the 1700s, my neck of the woods in Cow Bay was considered a prime hunting and fishing spot by the Mi’kmaq tribe during summer months. It must have been an incredibly beautiful place back then: sparkling waters, sandy beaches and an abundance of wild berries growing in the open spaces overlooking the ocean. I often wonder about the people who walked the trails in this forest centuries before my home was built here. What did they feel and think as they listened to the wind in the trees and the rain falling on the waters in the bog?
Disney’s movie Pocahontas attempts to contrast the attitude of Native People with that of Europeans upon their arrival in the New World. It also carries the message of our connection to one another and the earth in a song called the ‘Colors of the Wind.’ I hadn’t watched it in years, but when I saw it again recently, I was reminded of what a masterpiece it is.
Pocahontas’ real name was Matoaka. She was a member of the Powhatan tribe, who were rightly angered in the late 1990s by the way Disney exploited her story and distorted history for entertainment’s sake. However, Disney did correctly portray her as a bridge builder between the cultures that began to clash in North America in the 1600s with the arrival of European colonists. She was a risk-taker who was willing to see past surface differences in order to connect with others at a deeper, common level, for the benefit of all.
As unique as we may think we are, with our different habits and origins, we are all more alike than not. Perhaps the greatest thing that we don’t know, is how much we are all the same.
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What a lovely post, like a much needed ray of sunshine, giving me an immediate sense of your connection with the earth.
I cannot think how I never got to see the film ‘Pocahontas’! To be honest, at first I thought you were talking about ‘The New World’, by Terrence Malick (came out in 2006 I think). Same story, and entertainment too – but of a very different kind. At the end when the lights went up, I burst into tears in the middle of an audience of colleagues. How embarrassing!!(British, you know!)
I would heartily recommend ‘The New World’. Will send tissues.
Linda, I saw ‘The New World’ for the first time last week – just by coincidence of course. I stumbled across it on a visit to the bookmobile library. From both these movies, I got such a sense of the pureness of her heart, her absolute lack of personal agenda and her deep love for the earth and all its people. Her story is at once both uplifting and sad. It certainly is moving. The Disney version was the first of their ‘princess’ movies to show the main character left standing by herself at the end.
I was taught by the local Anishnabe (Ojibway) folks for seven years back in the ’80s and ’90s and so deeply admire the native spiritual beliefs. The power of them actually helped awaken deeply my connection with nature, and oh so many other things…
Some of the local missionaries thought they were “saving” the natives…perhaps there was no need to “save” as their deep spiritual beliefs could have taught much to the missionaries…
Thanks for sharing this link. We are more the same than many think…and perhaps the differences can be celebrated, not scorned.
I wonder how many European missionaries were converted to native beliefs.
The Ojibway have so much to offer the rest of us if only we would listen.
Actually, they say there were quite a few “regular” folks (not necessarily missionaries) who did convert to native beliefs and ways of life. So much more freeing and nature-based than other cultures at that time.