Pocahontas is a Disney animated film released in 1995 that takes place in 17th-century Virginia. The movie follows the encounter between an Algonquin woman, Pocahontas, and John Smith, an English soldier, and the ensuing tensions between the Indigenous peoples and the colonists. While the colonists, led by the antagonist Governor Radcliffe, set up camp in the “New World” by destroying the forest and mining and take up arms to protect themselves against the Algonquin peoples in search of gold, Pocahontas’s father, Chief Powhatan, prepares for war.
Amidst the heavily racist ideologies exemplified by the Englishmen, John Smith grows to be curious, respectful, and fond of Pocahontas, and the sentiment is reciprocated. At the climax of the movie, wherein John Smith was captured for the murder of an Algonquin man and to be beheaded, Pocahontas intervenes and shows the importance of tolerance and cooperation between the two groups. In the film’s conclusion, the Englishmen and the Algonquin display mutual respect, with the former opting to leave Virginia and the latter extending warmth to John Smith. While Pocahontas and John Smith do not end up together, their story signifies resistance to racism and colonialism.
According to Meera Baswan of The Indigenous Foundation, Pocahontas is based upon the life of Amonute also known as Matoaka (her secondary name). Despite Disney’s portrayal, Amonute and John Smith were not romantically involved, as they had not met until she was forcibly taken to England and Smith was known for holding chiefs at gunpoint to demand supplies. During the 17th century, a period characterized by imperialism and colonialism, colonizers would target Indigenous women and children and, unfortunately, many Indigenous girls would be sexually assaulted. Pocahontas (Amonute) would be no exception.
English colonist Captain Samuel Argall kidnapped Amonute and the colonists killed her husband to prevent attacks from Indigenous tribes, and he forced her to give up her first child. Amonute was taken to England as a captive, where she would allegedly be raped and abused by the colonists. There, she would be exploited as a political symbol of peace. In 1617, she was set to travel back to return home, but fell ill and died at the young age of 21. Despite her family expressing their wishes to lay her body down in their tribe, the Englishmen buried her in a church. The incredibly tragic story of the real Pocahontas reveals the grotesque romanticization that Disney employed in their interpretation.
To prepare for this post, I rewatched the film in its entirety and found myself cringing at the blatant racism and downplaying of colonial violence against Indigenous peoples. Indeed, the true story is shocking and dark, but these dark themes were not properly addressed and were, in large part, ignored. Disney’s Pocahontas not only disrespected the life of Amonute, but also serves to protect the legacy of settler colonialism via presenting colonization as having been peaceful, love-filled, and prosperous. This narrative, one that homogenizes the experiences of Indigenous peoples and fails to capture the severity of the violence against Indigenous women and girls, is dangerous.
Pocahontas was designed to be a family-friendly film, but with its utter disregard for the inhumane treatment of Indigenous peoples, does more harm than good. Undoubtedly, the film started conversations and discourse where there was a lack of Indigenous representation before, however, by promoting the film as a love story with a limited scope on colonial power dynamics, Disney perpetuated the very same stereotypes and prejudices that the film was meant to show were untrue. Furthermore, when compared to other Disney princesses at the time such as Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty, Pocahontas is incredibly hypersexualized. When she meets John Smith, he is attracted to her sex before he is attracted to her mind. As such, I found the movie incredibly disrespectful towards Indigenous peoples by romanticizing the violent colonial past.
However, on a more positive note, I thought the film did well at emphasizing how language matters. In the beginning, John Smith along with the other colonists call the Algonquin and subsequently all Indigenous peoples “savages” and “injuns”. Upon meeting Pocahontas and realizing how the use of “savage” was incredibly inappropriate. After this, when one of his comrades uses the term “savages”, Smith is outraged and calls him out for this. The comrade replies by saying that it is just a word, but Smith points out the flaw of this justification. This aspect of the film is incredibly impactful since language plays such an integral role in perpetuating and dismantling systemic ideologies. Through Smith, we can see how colonial language serves to protect the logic and legacy of colonialism.
While the colonists describing the Algonquin peoples as “barely human” and “not like” them, Pocahontas points out that the real inhumanity lies in the violence committed by colonists against Indigenous peoples and nature. The film does a wonderful job of depicting the centrality of nature in Indigenous cultures, most exhibited by the song, “Colors of the Wind”. Through her singing, Pocahontas conveys the role of nature and the difference between Indigenous epistemologies and colonial beliefs, shown in the lines, “You think you own whatever land you land on / But I know every rock and tree and creature / Has a life, has a spirit, has a name”. Another set of lines that emphasize the nature of colonization depicted in the movie is, “You think the only people who are people / Are the people who look and think like you”.
In sum, Disney’s Pocahontas is an incredibly problematic portrayal of North American colonial history for several reasons including the romanticization of the violence against Indigenous peoples, the hypersexualization of Indigenous women and girls, and the total disregard for the real story of Pocahontas. While the film has redeeming qualities in that it addresses the inappropriateness of colonial language and centers nature in its storytelling, its overall narrative serves to protect colonial ideologies and erase history (or rather continue to cast colonial history in a flattering light). Pocahontas raised many questions and sparked controversy rightfully so, and surely these discussions have facilitated better Indigenous representation, especially in media.
References
Baswan, M. (n.d.). The true story behind Disney’s Pocahontas. The Indigenous Foundation. https://www.theindigenousfoundation.org/articles/the-true-story-behind-disneys-pocahontas
Goldberg, E. & Gabriel, M.. (1995). Pocahontas [Film]. The Walt Disney Studios.
Image and Video Attributions (In Order of Appearance)
https://hellogiggles.com/unanswered-questions-pocahontas/
https://incaseyoureinterested.com/2017/11/28/was-pocahontas-her-real-name/
https://www.theindigenousfoundation.org/articles/the-true-story-behind-disneys-pocahontas