COMM 536
Critical Thinking Paper 2
The New World (2005) directed by Terrence Malick portrays the Powhatan tribe in the early 17th century just as English settlers are colonizing the area that was later called Virginia.
The story begins in 1607 with a group of soldiers and male settlers arriving on land and the First Nations people curiously watching from behind trees. There is a lot of interaction between “the naturals,” as the Captain calls them, and the colonists. The first face-to-face meeting takes place in an open field where the contrast between the well-clothed and decorated Englishmen and the dirty, half naked savages is made more distinct. The party of soldiers halts as the braves each approach one and curiously examine clothing, weaponry, and faces. It is peaceful.
The narrator reads from a diary entry saying, “the savages often visit us kindly, like a herd of curious deer,” and while this is the initial view, the Captain orders his men to sleep offshore in their ship in full armor as a precaution until the fort can be built.
As the film goes on, the First Nations watch the white man’s activities closely and the first death happens when a Native man walking through the English construction site snags a tool from a nearby table and fails to return it at the request of the soldier. He is shot and from that moment on, the tribesmen are fearful and distanced from the harsh judgment of the English.
To negotiate between the parties, the soldiers send a group, including John Smith, a known and redeemed pirate, along with two kidnapped warriors. The white men are afraid of the unknown territory and when their captives run away, they abandon John Smith in the forest leaving him to his own devices. In his wanderings, Smith is taken captive by the Powhatan tribe and brought to the chief, who orders death. Pocahontas, daughter of the chief, saves Smith’s life by throwing her body across his in the moments before his execution. He is then kept with the tribe throughout a period of months and learns their ways as he earns their respect, and Pocahontas’ love. Significantly, he promises the chief that the white men plan to leave and go back to where they came from in the springtime of the year.
He is returned in good health along with gifts from his captors, though the First Nations are not allowed inside the fort. The buildings are complete, but Smith finds his comrades are nearly starved to death. Conditions are so poor that mutiny takes place and he is immediately placed in charge. Throughout the winter months, they survive, but barely. Their salvation comes when Pocahontas, against her father’s wishes, brings a friendly party bearing gifts of food and seeds for the spring. The fort at Jamestown survives only because of her kindness.
In the spring, the settlers plant crops and establish themselves even further disregarding their promise to the Powhatan chief. The Chief, in turn, is upset at the betrayal and attacks the fort to drive the white men out. An exchange between his advisor and himself shows the negotiation where the advisor says, “They just want a bit of swampland” and the chief replies, “For now.”
From the point of the attack on, the English settlers are at war with the naturals, or the “naked devils from the mouth of hell” as they are now known. Relationships have broken down. The chief learns that it was his own daughter who gave the seeds for them to be established, and Pocahontas is kicked out of her settlement.
At the same time, John Smith loses the confidence of his people and is removed from leadership. He and Pocahontas still share a special bond, but he knows that taking her away from the land she loves is not something that will make her happy, and also that they cannot have a life together there.
He is sent away and has a friend tell Pocahontas that he has died at sea. She grieves for him and seven years after she and Smith met, a new John enters her life, John Rolfe. They become friends and eventually marry, though her heart still belongs to Smith.
In 1614, Pocahontas learns that Smith is still alive, and honestly expresses her hesitancies to her husband, Rolfe. They have been planning a trip to England as Rolfe secured Pocahontas a court with the King and Queen, and he also plans to respect his wife’s wishes and reunite her with her first love.
When Pocahontas and Smith meet, they have much to talk of, but she sees that he is not as good of a man as Rolfe. They leave on amicable terms, but she returns to her husband and asks to go home and continue her life with him and their child. Unfortunately, she becomes ill and is unable to travel home.
On April 13, 1616, Pocahontas dies away from her homeland. She never returns, and the relationship between the white settlers and her people, the Powhatan, are never healed.
Throughout this film, the First Nations people are represented with perhaps more fairness than had been granted to them in past historical depictions of life. Their village is revealed to be organized and intentional. They are gentle, faithful, lacking in greed, slander, and jealousy with no sense of possession, according to the narrator. They are deeply religious, often communing with Mother Nature and feeling the interconnectedness of all living things. They are industrious as each of their actions is significant to survival. They play to learn how to hunt; they create art in order to clothe and feed themselves; and they perform ceremonious dances and songs in order to build community and faith.
Despite these positive views, the First Nations are also critiqued from the perspective of the colonists. They are described as thieves, uncouth savages, scalpers, and a threat to the established settlement on the coast.
Having only this representation of the First Nations, history of the new world might be framed in a new way. For example, it is evident by the introduction of a First Nations presence on the land before the colonists anchor in the harbor that what is a “new” world to the English is an old world to others. There is a stronger sense of the resistance First Nations have toward the white settlers encroaching on their land. The white settlers have a strong position of entitlement and manifest destiny is evident, as is the unfairness of this perspective toward the native First Nations. This film also demonstrates both the generosity and the brutality of the Powhatan people. They come to rescue the colonists in the first brutal winter, and also fight them in hopes of wiping them out of the land once it becomes clear that the settlers want to stay. History, according to this film, recognizes the invaluable role of the First Nations in assisting the English in settling and staying. History also might maintain a skewed perspective of First Nations government. They are fair, but they are ruthless, and much more lenient, by comparison to the English settlers. Altogether, a balanced view of history is needed, and this film alone would not suffice to teach the lessons.
A First Nations child growing up with the societal stereotypes that present their ethnic group as being lazy, intoxicated, savage, and uncivilized may have serious consequences for the child’s cultural identity. The initial response might be one of severe dissociation. A First Nations child would not want to be perceived in the present through the lens of the past. He or she may then be uncomfortable with being identified as a First Nations person, rejecting the positive community-building aspects of this title along with the negative views.
Another reflex besides running away from one’s identity might be to accept it as truth and become complicit in a self-fulfilling prophecy of behavior. If a child is always told he or she is lazy because of a difference of values or learning modalities, that child may simply give up and stop trying to achieve by the standards of the western, individualistic classroom culture thus becoming lazy in their lack of motivation to succeed within that framework. This does not mean that the child is in fact lazy, but rather that they do not share the beliefs that promote a specific definition of achievement.
Besides rejecting one’s own culture with hopes of assimilating to another, or submitting to the popular stereotypical belief, a First Nations child may have a more balanced reaction to the depictions of his or her ancestors. He or she may recognize the fallacy of presenting one weighted perspective of a people and work to correct the misrepresentations that occur. This approach involves noting the negative stereotypes and thwarting them. For example, the child from a tribe known for rampant alcoholism may stay sober and become an educated social worker advocating for positive change. The child from a a violent gang-divided community may resist all recruitment and become a law-enforcement officer. By rejecting the negative stereotypes and living out positive rebuttals, a First Nations child may affect change in reaffirming his or her cultural identity.
Framing is when the dominant communicator presents a context for information that highlights certain aspects designated as being attention-worthy while minimizing others that are deemed unimportant. For example, directors who focus on a First Nations community at war rather than at peace is framing the natives as violent, blood-thirsty people. To this effect, the producers create a sense of fear out of respect on the part of the viewer, but also a distance from the savagery that is not prevalent within western culture. In the film The New World (2005), Malick shows scenes from the Powhatan village where young innocent children are playing and interacting, thus humanizing a group previously represented as having little regard for human life.
Framing is an intentional story-telling device used to persuade the audience to adopt one perspective, the director’s perspective, on a certain topic or group. Miller and Ross (2004) explain that “Through content selection, organization, and emphasis, the media produce, reproduce, and acculturate preferred story lines and descriptions” (p. 245). By showing one side of a story in contrast to another, the problem can either be intensified or downplayed at the discretion of the director. For example, the problem concerning violence against women in the global sphere can be downplayed by focusing on films or celebrity stories that normalize the abusive activities. It can also be intensified by presenting figures and statistics that reveal the startling percentages of women in different parts of the world who suffer from violence.
The act of framing distorts reality and skews the story toward one side or another. Typically the side with the most power, position, or capital is the one who decides what is shared and what is left out. The purpose behind framing a story or a group of people is to sway public opinion in either a positive or a negative direction. To rally support for a cause, it will be framed as something that is immediate and impactful. To turn a group of people against another, the one faction will be framed as a threat in some way to the security of the other. Distancing and distinguishing people by using labels and one side of the story frames history and creates an unfair balance of information and opinion.
Miller and Ross (2004) explore “three dominant frames of American Indians: the generic Indian, the Indian as ‘other,’ and the good/bad Indian” (Berkhofer, 1978, as cited in Miller and Ross, 2004, p. 249).
The framing approach of the First Nation individual as “other” or being different from mainstream culture creates a label that distinguishes a native person from the culture within which he or she lives. Dee Brown (1970) illustrates this framing technique when he records how the First Nations people are denied citizenship and personhood within the government of the United States, though they are the original occupants of the land this government protects. Mainstream culture’s perception of the First Nations is influenced by “othering” because it reinforces the right to seek assimilation and acculturation from those who are different. To emphasizes the distinctiveness of First Nations culture is synonymous with identifying areas of growth for the natives. For example, examining the cooperative learning strategies employed by different First Nations communities reveals a contrast to the highly individualistic competitive classrooms of the colonists. By comparison, the measurement of intelligence and achievement is established by the formalized educational process, thus negating the importance and influence of cultivated experiences.
Looking at the First Nations people as either “good or bad” measures individual and collective worth by the moral standards of the enfranchised society. To say a native person is bloodthirsty and savage is to characterize them by uncivilized and morally wrong behaviors, though the violence from which the labels extend may be enacted in self-defense. Referring to a First Nations individual as stoic, dignified, strong, or at one with nature is to illustrate the good qualities, again, within the context of the “civilized” culture. In mainstream western culture, the moral judgement is based on perceived behaviors not on actual virtues of character. Highlighting the good or bad qualities of an individual native reinforces the idea that participants of mainstream western culture are in superior position that thus enables them to pass that judgement. Similar to “othering,” this approach creates a power imbalance that permits the prejudices directed towards marginalized groups. The evolved perspective of the "bad" native is the "degraded Indian," who has adopted the base behaviours of western culture without the predominantly Christian framework.
On the opposite end of this spectrum is the "voiced participant" frame used to describe the experience of First Nations people. This frame explores the positive interaction of those native individuals who are able to retain strong connections to their history and past while operating within the western mindset. Mainstream society can accept these individuals for their distinctiveness as natives and also celebrate similarities emerging through likened experiences and linked humanity.
First Nations culture is often presented through the frame of being a "historic relic" belonging in stories but not in real life. This is an especially problematic frame as it creates a vacuum for contemporary First Nations culture. If they cannot practice traditional lifestyles and cannot fully integrate as mainstream citizens, then there is no place for a First Nations person to live. Without allowing the general understanding of First Nations to grow and incorporate culture changes as communities adapt over time, western society robs First Nations people of everything that makes them unique and distinctive. This framing causes problems like the next point, treating all people of First Nations descent as one and the same, and that same being archaic.
On the opposite end of this spectrum is the "voiced participant" frame used to describe the experience of First Nations people. This frame explores the positive interaction of those native individuals who are able to retain strong connections to their history and past while operating within the western mindset. Mainstream society can accept these individuals for their distinctiveness as natives and also celebrate similarities emerging through likened experiences and linked humanity.
First Nations culture is often presented through the frame of being a "historic relic" belonging in stories but not in real life. This is an especially problematic frame as it creates a vacuum for contemporary First Nations culture. If they cannot practice traditional lifestyles and cannot fully integrate as mainstream citizens, then there is no place for a First Nations person to live. Without allowing the general understanding of First Nations to grow and incorporate culture changes as communities adapt over time, western society robs First Nations people of everything that makes them unique and distinctive. This framing causes problems like the next point, treating all people of First Nations descent as one and the same, and that same being archaic.
Framing a First Nations person as a “generic outsider” relates information about community, lifestyle, and practices as if it applies to all First Nations groups and tribes everywhere within North America simply because they are not white. The assumption is that all non-Caucasian entities function within similar rules and structures. It is dangerous because it misinforms the uneducated audience about the role of different and very varied tribes, thus devaluing the distinctiveness of each independent culture group of First Nations. The mainstream culture is then cultivating a new type of stereotype that speaks to the similarities between West Coast natives and the Plains tribes rendering each group as being treated like another. It is this framing that appears to be the cause for the tribal relocations Brown (1970) records in Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee. Why else would conquered communities be displaced to areas beyond the familiar? Because if one First Nations group can successfully make a life there, every other one should be expected to as well.
This last framing concept is perhaps the most prevalent in mediated portrayals of culture. Unfortunately, it is perpetuated by the lack of knowledge concerning the distinctions between different bands and tribes, and is permitted because of the overwhelming “othering” that has dominated the views of First Nations in North America. Significantly, Disney’s representation of the First Nations that James Barrie placed in Neverland in his play Peter Pan reveals some of these framing concepts that still existed in North America in 1953 when it was released. Interestingly, the song "What makes the Red Man red?" is sung by Anglo choristers and the concepts used in the story-telling are exclusively Western constructs, though that presentation alone has significantly influenced the way in which First Nations are viewed and the stereotypes that fuel prejudices.
