Why ‘Avatar’ really IS fantasy

A number of commentators have noted how 'Avatar' is an allegory for modern times. That’s to say, a so-called 'primitive' tribe, in this case the Na’vi, has its land invaded by a company, the RDA corporation, eager to exploit a valuable natural resource, 'unobtanium', on its land.

This is a situation many indigenous people could relate to. All around the world, from Africa to Asia to the Americas, their territories are being invaded by companies with all the kinds of tricks and dirty treats that the RDA has up its sleeves - and many more.

So why, despite the allegory, is 'Avatar' a fantasy after all? Because the Na’vi win and the RDA loses: the 'unobtanium' remains unobtainable. Because more often than not, over the last 500 years or so, it is the tribe which has lost and the company that has won: the 'unobtainium' has been anything but.

This is a largely unwritten history which many people in western Europe and the US are completely unaware of. Millions and millions have been killed in the scramble for resources - and the killing continues today. This isn’t the history they teach us at school.

That’s not to say 'Avatar' can’t act as a wake-up call for citizens in countries where companies like the RDA are based. It can. And it’s not to say that indigenous people around the world don’t sometimes repel companies from their land. They do. Only not as 'simply' as the Na'vi do.

What the papers (didn't) say about the RBS chief

Plenty has been written about the Royal Bank of Scotland chief's appearance at a UK Treasury Select Committee hearing this week and his acknowledgement that his parents wouldn't approve of his almost £10 million bonus package.

'If you ask my mother and father about my pay, they'd say it was too high,' Stephen Hester was quoted as saying in The Times.

Who else wouldn't approve? Try dozens of indigenous communities in Canada whose land and lives are being devastated by an RBS-financed project described by one Greenpeace campaigner as 'the biggest global warming crime ever seen'.

This is the 'tar sands', or 'oil sands', project in Alberta in which the RBS, according to the Rainforest Action Network, has invested more than £8 billion. None of the UK's national broadsheets managed to mention this.

To hear about the effects of the tar sands project, here is someone, Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, from the region being devastated: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/29/tarsands-oil-rbs-canada

As Eriel points out, UK taxpayers must bear some responsibility for the 'tar sands' project because 84% of the RBS is now owned by the state. For the guilty, 'look no further than the mirror,' she says.

Almost £10 million for overseeing the 'biggest global warming crime ever'? When the Head of the Select Committee told Hester 'the sheer size of your package seems to be out of synch with what is happening out there', he was more right than he knew.

For more information see: http://blog.newint.org/editors/2009/12/22/head-in-the-sand/

'So very true. Thank you.'

The world's largest Native American news source, Indian Country Today (ICT), published my poem 'They came' back in July. One ICT reader's response was: 'So very true. Thank you.'

'They came' condemns our silence to speak out against the genocide of indigenous people around the world over the last 500 years.

To date, it has been published in a number of countries: Argentina, Chile, Colombia, India, Peru, Spain, the US and the UK.

To read the poem see: http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/50046577.html