Avatar, which is still the highest-grossing movie of all time, and which has spawned two sequels, with two more in the works, tells the story of a white U.S. Marine who infiltrates a blue-skinned alien race, falls in love, and joins the fight to save them from corporate extraction. Director James Cameron has said the Na’vi were inspired by Indigenous peoples globally, citing the Lakota Sioux as the “driving force.” Now, in a case of life imitating art, Cameron himself is being accused of corporate extraction by an Indigenous woman. On May 5, Q’orianka Kilcher filed a lawsuit against the director, alleging that he used her face at 14, without her knowledge or consent, as the “keystone” for the character Neytiri.
The Huachiperi-Quechua actress was 14 when Cameron first saw a picture of her in the Los Angeles Times. She was co-starring in Terrence Malick’s 2005 film, The New World, as Pocahontas, née Matoaka, the Native American girl who was kidnapped at 12, held hostage, converted to Christianity, and renamed Rebecca before dying in England at 21.
