Our theme week for October 2016 will be Representations of Indigenous Women.
There are relatively few mainstream representations of Indigenous people and even fewer representations of Indigenous women. Throughout the history of film, non-Native women have been playing the roles of Indigenous women; a prime example is Peter Pan‘s Tiger Lily who is effectively whitewashed in her various incarnations. When Indigenous women do appear on-screen, they are often stereotyped, exoticized (Pocahontas), and brutalized (The Revenant). Indigenous women have little agency in these stories that objectify and violate them because these are the stories told by non-Native men who use these women as a plot device or a symbol.
However, there is a continually growing, vibrant presence of Indigenous independent films that are often made by and star Indigenous people telling their own stories, and these stories are receiving critical acclaim (Smoke Signals, Ixcanul). Native people across the world are participating in this movement that raises the voices and visibility of Indigenous people (The Cherokee Word for Water: an American Cherokee film, Once Were Warriors: a New Zealand Māori film, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner: a Canadian Inuit film, Samson and Delilah: an Australian Aboriginal film, and Ixacanul: a Guatemalan Kaqchikel Mayan film). Much of the movement of Indigenous storytelling focuses on male protagonists, so there is still a great need for the stories of Indigenous women.
We desperately need more Indigenous people on-screen and behind the camera, especially in mainstream Hollywood films, which is why it’s exciting that the upcoming 2016 Disney animated film Moana will feature the first Polynesian princess, voiced by Auli’i Cravalho, a Native Hawaiian girl.
We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so please get your proposals in early if you know which topic you would like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.
Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.
If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.
Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).
The final due date for these submissions is Monday, October 31, 2016 by midnight Eastern Time.
Here are some possible topic ideas:
Moana
Rabbit-Proof Fence
The Revenant
Imprint
Red Road
Pocahontas
The Far Horizons
The New World
Smoke Signals
Northern Exposure
Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner
A River Runs Through It
Longmire
Rhymes for Young Ghouls
Whale Rider
Peter Pan
Once Were Warriors
Edge of America
Ixcanul
Four Sheets to the Wind
Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance
Dances with Wolves
Inuk
Samson and Delilah
The Cherokee Word for Water
It’s a very male-centric story, but the Australian film “Ten Canoes” is the most high-profile recent movie with an indigenous cast I can think of.
How is this possible? Whose idea was it to hold up Moana as an example of indigenous female or feminist representation? I’m stunned. Please, whoever organized this important call out for writers, rethink your position on that and do some research. Because there is a HUGE indigenous pushback taking place to hopefully stop or at least elevate the damage being done to us by the outright racist cultural and genealogical theft/misappropriation/exploitation o Disney. Hard to believe any intelligent person identifying as feminist would see Dis-Mo as legitimate. Seriously! This American insistence that we Hawaiians/Polynesians and Pacific Islanders be seen or interpreted through the racist American lens is too much! This is the 21st century, not the 19th. There are so many things wrong with what Disney has done– for ANY feminist to attempt to use that Moana character, who has been stripped of the most basic cultural protocols and realties of our cultures in Hawaii and the Pacific– for ANY of you to go along with and further the whitewashing and ignore the theft and pimping of our culture(s) and genealogies so that you can fantasize that some old white men at Disney created an authentic female/feminist character– is intellectually and politically unfit. Get educated.
Thank you very much for your comment. We are incredibly sorry. As the film hasn’t been released yet, we weren’t saying that ‘Moana’ is a positive depiction or feminist representation for Indigenous women and girls, especially considering the racist ‘Moana’ Halloween costume that was pulled and Disney’s history of problematic depictions, rather that it’s great to see more inclusive representation on-screen in a mainstream movie. Regardless, we should have been more mindful. Thank you again for speaking out and raising awareness.
Mahalo nui for taking it in. Aloha!
Hi Bitch Flicks – first of all thankyou for the very earnest and respectful response and apology – it’s a rare and welcome experience to have our voices heard (especially in relation to this issue). I agree with Keala – this film is anything but empowering for us as wahine Pasifika. I’m standing in solidarity and grief with the indigenous mothers, daughters and sisters who are, as we speak, being evicted and made homeless by Disney’s Aulani Resort to make space for the expected onslaught of Moana driven tourism. I’m also in solidarity with the multitudes of wahine Pasifika who have been sexually assaulted and made vulnerable through the fetishisation of our image. The sexual exoticizing of Polynesia is perpetuated through this film and the tourism it supports, and the defiling of our sacred ancestresses (like Pele) is indisputably linked to the defiling of her descendants (us) today. I stand in solidarity with all wahine pasifika who now worry about their future generations having to fight yet another MISrepresentation in order to hold on to their own cultural identity (and what that will mean for their cultural, spiritual, and mental wellbeing). This movie has not been inclusive – in fact to represent the collective story of such a broad area one could not have achieved the requisite level of inclusion. It should have just been left alone because we – the women of the Pacific – we have perfectly fine storytelling traditions already. We don’t need Disney in our way.
A small note about a couple of the movies you’ve mentioned above. Alan Duff is a racist, self-loathing deficit-obsessed bigot who compulsively profiles us as unlikely to succeed. If you unpick the storyline of Once Were Warriors you’ll discover an abundance of misogynistic and bigotted subtexts.
Please see this article written by our staunch wahine social commentary group Te Wharepora Hou. https://tewhareporahou.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/just-another-excuse-to-bash-maori-a-reply-to-alan-duff/
And Whale Rider actually takes my own matrilineal tribe and presents it as a patrilineal and patriarchal tribe. So ironic as we are pretty much famous amongst Maori for our traditional female leadership.
Both of these issues sit with the original authors, not the films themselves, but both of them are extremely problematic for us, as wahine, today.
Mauriora. xx
http://www.civilbeat.org/2016/09/maui-skin-suit-isnt-the-end-of-moana-trouble/