I Remember You: Postironic Belief and Settler Colonialism in Stephen Graham Jones's <em>Ledfeather</em>

Abstract

When James Cameron’s Avatar was released in 2009 to recordsetting sales, scores of fans and critics praised the fi lm not merely for its groundbreaking cinematography but also for its prescient political critiques. As Duke scholar Michael Carmichael observed, Avatar was a “‘hyperpolitical fi lm’ with a simple message: ‘Th e American MilitaryIndustrial Complex will utterly destroy the known universe. . . . [T]he evil demons set loose to destroy humanity are— us— the US of A. Th e evil Usses are, indeed, Us.’” In an age of veiled imperialism, Carmichael contended, Avatar provided the jolt needed to wake the public from their political stupor. But not everyone was so willing to go along with this activist assessment. While some noted the patent influences of Dances with Wolves and other “white savior” films, cultural scholar Lorenzo Veracini interpreted the picture as neither politically left nor right but instead as a markedly settler colonial story.1 In the movie, “the aliens’ main role— like that of indigenous peoples in other settler colonial settings— is to be an obstacle, not to be exploited” (Veracini, “District” 364). Even though the film’s protagonist, an American army veteran and amputee named Jake, fights alongside the planet’s indigenous peoples, Veracini contends that he enacts a settler fantasy: he declares his independence from the federal government and subsequently stakes a claim to indigenous lands. Responding to Cameron’s claim that the film was not unAmerican but merely political, then, Veracini wholeheartedly agrees, but with a crucial caveat: “Avatar is not ‘unAmerican.’ . . . On the contrary, it is the most (settler, nonindigenous) American story one can tell” (364). Millions of viewers may have enjoyed the unsurpassed cinematography, but as they did so they unconsciously imbibed an uncannily familiar settler colonial narrative.2