Some aspects of Disney’s hit summer movie, Pocahontas, have angered Native Americans and spawned debate about Native American history and folklore.

The fairy tale of the Indian “princess” Pocahontas, whose real name was Matoaka, has impacted the way Americans, especially American children, view native people.

Disney version

Disney’s Pocahontas tells a different story from the history-book version.

The story is set in 1607, when English settlers are exploring the New World and the greedy governor, John Ratcliffe, and the adventurous blond-haired, blue-eyed sea captain John Smith come to Virginia. While the British soldiers are digging up the countryside in a frenzied search for gold, Smith, an English colonist and founder of Jamestown in his early 30s, is told to protect the colonists from the savages. He meets Pocahontas, a beautiful young Indian woman, and the two fall in love.

But when the Indians and the colonists begin to fight, Smith is captured by the Indians after killing two of them trying to protect a fellow colonist. When Smith is to be executed, Pocahontas bravely tells her father he must kill her first and Chief Powhatan agrees to save Smith’s life. Later Smith responds with the same sacrifice by saving Pawhatan’s life from an English bullet.

Real history

The historical version of the story is that a girl called Matoaka, a Pawhatan Indian of 10-12 years of age, and her people did help the colonists, said Herman J. Viola in his book After Columbus: the Smithsonian Chronicle of the North American Indians.

The true story, if it actually occurred, was more a matter of politics and keeping peace between the Indians and the colonists, than the melodramatic account Smith tells, said Raymond William Stedman, author of the book, Shadows of the Indian.

Four years after this event occurred, Matoaka was kidnapped by Virginia colonists to keep the “Emperor,” Chief Pawhatan, in line, Stedman said. In captivity, Matoaka learned English ways from the governor’s daughters and met and married planter John Rolfe. It was an arranged marriage to keep relations friendly between the Indians and the English settlers, Viola said.

Rolfe took Matoaka and her baby boy to England three years later and became the “darling of the English court,” Stedman said.

‘Fiction needs balance’

Irma Wilson-White, Iowa State American Indian program assistant for Minority Student Affairs, said a lot of good things are brought out in the movie, but if nothing is given to balance the fiction in the story, then children will probably believe the movie and will not know the truth.

But there are several inaccuracies, she adds. Beside the historical discrepancies Disney takes with the film, the idea of Pocahontas being a princess and the idea of Chief Powhatan as a king is not found in Indian culture, she said.

“There is no such thing in Indian society,” Wilson-White said.

Modesty is important to Indians. Pocahontas would never have been the favored daughter she is in the film and she never would have worn the short dress that falls off of one shoulder, Wilson-White said.

Another important misrepresentation is the fact that Pocahontas was a lot younger than Disney would have its audience believe. She was only 10 or 12 instead of 17 or 18 in the movie, Wilson-White said.

“People really need to know that she was a child,” she said.

Ultimately, Wilson-White said, “A film like this doesn’t merit to be published.”

Wilson-White encourages teachers and educators “to be more sensitive, aware and to do their homework in determining actual and fictional stories.”

Increased stereotypes?

Smokey McKinney, an American Indian graduate assistant in ISU’s American Indian studies program and Minority Student Affairs assistant, said he has subscribed to some Internet newsgroups which discussed the controversy of the movie. The consensus from the newsgroups, McKinney said, was that the movie helped to increase the stereotypes about Native Americans.

McKinney said beside the inaccurate portrayal of the story, Disney and Hollywood turned the movie “into something that sells.” He said Pocahontas was “voluptuous. And sex sells.”

“I don’t think that’s right,” McKinney said.

Another aspect of the movie discussed in the newsgroups was that Russell Means, a Native American political leader, was the voice of Powhatan, Pocahontas’s father. McKinney said its odd that Means, an Indian leader, agreed to participate given the film’s inaccuracies.

On a World Wide Web page, Disney’s Pocahontas producer James Pentecost said he sees Pocahontas as “the strongest heroine to ever appear in a Disney film. She is open, athletic, dynamic, intelligent and quite beautiful. One historian described her as sort of the first diplomat…”

Disney officials said on its homepage that they sought advice, participation and comments from prominent Native American leaders, educators and groups when making the movie.

Means said, “Pocahontas is the single finest work ever done on American Indians in Hollywood … It tells the truth about the motives for Europeans initially coming to the so-called New World. I find it astounding that Americans and the Disney Studios are willing to tell the truth … I’m very proud to be associated with this film.”

Appropriate for children?

But Laurine Rogers, ISU temporary assistant professor of anthropology and mother of a three-year-old, said, “the movie is too operatic for children.” Rogers said children are innocent and come to the movie “without a lot of the cultural baggage.”

Admittedly, however, the movie “probably has no effect on children’s perceptions” of Indians. “I’m not sure children understand some of the things presented in the movie.”

Rogers said children are more impressed by the scenes than by the words. “The general mood means more than the terms themselves,” she said.

Rogers added that a child probably would not understand the word “savage” because it is not a word that is used often anymore, but a child would see the impressive village and nice way of life the Indians had and, “those kinds of impressions stick home.”

The movie is a cartoon, Rogers emphasized. “People try to find implications for society,” but there is a talking tree in the movie, she said.