Allan R. Bevere: Indigenous Women and the Invaders Who Love Them. L. Daniel Hawk
This is second in a series by Daniel Hawk regarding his book, Joshua in 3-D.
…One of the characters that figure prominently in biblical Joshua, Manifest Destiny, and Avatar is the indigenous woman who helps the invader. In Joshua, Israelites no sooner enter the land than they encounter a Canaanite prostitute named Rahab, who protects them when the local authorities come looking for them, and then helps them make their getaway. In America’s master narrative Captain John Smith, a leader of England’s first colony at Jamestown, is saved from death by Pocahontas, who then becomes a bridge between the colony and the Powhatan Confederacy. Then, when the young United States embarks on its voyage of discovery into the land it purchased from the French, Lewis and Clark (counterparts of the two Israelite spies at Jericho?) meet Sacagawea, who guides and helps the explorers on their mission. Along similar lines Jake Sully, in the person of his avatar, meets a Na’vi woman who rescues him from viperwolves in the Pandora wilderness. She then takes him to her village and, like Rahab and Pocahontas before her, becomes the invader’s advocate before the people.
Why do conquest narratives include stories about indigenous women who help the invaders? That the invader is male and the indigene is female can be seen as an expression of the patriarchal societies that tell the stories; men matter and men must remain the dominant characters. Yet why is it important to the invader to include a story-line about indigenous helpers – and in the case of America, to memorialize them in movies (Pocahontas, The New World) and tokens of economic exchange (Sacagawea, on the U.S. one-dollar coin)? …
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