“I want to share this award with all the First Nations represented in this film and all the indigenous communities around the world, it is time we recognised your history and we protect your indigenous lands from corporate interests and people that are out there to exploit them…..”
2016 Best Actor Golden Globe winner Leonardo diCaprio for the movie The Revenant.
Kia ora Mr DiCaprio, we accept!
Can’t wait to see y/our Golden Globe housed on our marae, some time soon. I know, I know, it could take some years to work its way thru all of the nations of Turtle Island, home crowd first and all that, but maybe we could ask Sir Richard at Weta Workshop (Oscar winning local) to knock us up a replica while y/our real Golden Globe is making its tiki tour to these shores?
My Screen Natives movie review of The Revenant can be seen here.
While First Nations the world over basked in the nano second of sudden online fame of being feted by one of the worlds leading movie actors, and ‘winning’ a Golden Globe, our reverie was cut short by the ‘Oscars no natives’ story and the planned boycotting of the 2016 Oscar ceremony.
Aue! Just when that nice Mr DiCaprio was planning on taking us with him – the whole bro’town – to reflected First Nations Oscar victory, a boycott had to come along and ruin it. Taiho! Haven’t we already seen a spectacular Oscar boycott ? And just what the hell is a revenant and what does revenant mean?
Revenant: Noun 1. a person who returns. 2. a person who returns as a spirit after death; ghost. Word origin, French revenir
Stranger than fiction but true nonetheless;
- in 1973 at the Oscars ceremony in front of millions of viewers, Sacheen Littlefeather (see above) President of the National Native American Affirmative Committee refused the Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando who had boycotted the Oscars ceremony in protest at the representation of Native Americans in film and television and to support a Native struggle at Wounded Knee.
- 2016 Māori are actively opposed to the signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) on the grounds that it is likely to take away our intellectual rights present and past, and relies upon the good will of the government to take into account the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi obligations to Māori.
But there ends the analogy to being REVENANT for; Māori never left Aōtearoa and despite everything that has been inflicted upon us, we are not ‘returning’ or even ghosts in our land but very much alive and fighting. The flaws in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement are real and do jeopardise Māori rights under the Treaty of Waitangi.
Cheers Mr Leo DiCaprio for supporting us and bringing our plight as First Nations people into the world media consciousness for a precious heartbeat.
We wish that it could be so – but our over 170 year fight for sovereignty of lands, language, culture against all those who would exploit them for profit – is not so easily fixed with winning a Golden Globe.
Stop the signing of TPPA and Honour the Treaty of Waitangi.
Sources
Dr. Carwyn Jones, Associate Professor Claire Charters, Andrew Erueti, Professor Jane Kelsey
Click to access ep3-tiriti-paper.pdf
Click to access ep3-tiriti-paper.pdf
Leonardo diCaprio 2016 Golden Globes Winning Speech
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