"Anti-indigenous" and "racist", the new Avatar arouses the anger of Native American minorities

Blue skins cause black anger.

, the second part of James Cameron's saga devoted to the conflict between the Na'vi - the blue people of the planet Pandora - and vile human colonists reigns without great difficulty on the box office of this end of the year.

In this, he thwarts the indignation and the call for a boycott of the film formulated in December by some Amerindian communities.

"Our cultures have been appropriated in an intolerable way in order to feed the myth of the white savior",

declared on her social networks, on December 18, the Native American activist Navajo Yuè Begay, calling for a boycott of the blockbuster deemed

and

.

His appeal was supported in particular by several personalities such as rapper Frank Waln, from the Lakota tribe.

It has also been taken up, outside the United States, by Cheney Poole, a Maori activist, who, in an interview with the

, criticized the

of the colonial phenomenon and the minimization, by the film, of the suffering endured by indigenous peoples around the world.

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An assumed metaphor for the colonization of the Americas, the

saga has reinvented, since 2009, the struggle and resistance of indigenous people close to nature against technologically advanced and resource-hungry foreigners.

Freely inspired by a patchwork of historical cultures, the Na'vi were, in the first film, helped by a human eager to join their cause in addition to pinching for a beautiful local warrior.

So many exotic narrative elements to flatter the Western imagination.

In 2010, during a trip to the Amazon, James Cameron also described the Sioux of the 19th century as

which should have

, which had provoked several outraged reactions within the Amerindian communities.

Fantasies and appropriation

More than twenty years later, these same arguments resurface.

The film is thus accused of “blueface”.

's "blueface"

consists of its overwhelmingly white cast, which critics say goes against the grain of the films' very message.

, remarks Yuè Begay.

The activist points to the widespread cultural appropriation evidenced by the appearance of these blue-skinned aliens.

A new Na'vi ethnicity introduced in

is particularly inspired by Maori culture, to name but one.

And only two non-white actors, Zoe Saldana and Cliff Curtis, appear in the film.

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In short,

would be, according to these activists, only a compendium of Western romantic stereotypes about the natives of our blue planet, tactlessly adapted in a science fiction setting.

summarizes for the

the Cheyenne researcher Autumn Asher BlackDeer, from the University of Denver.

What does the interested party say?

If he had categorically rejected in 2010 to have made a film with racist overtones, James Cameron was less closed, this year, to these criticisms.

," said the filmmaker, questioned by the British site Unilad.

This mea culpa should not derail the next three

films planned by the filmmaker.