While I was working on a presentation about Pocahontas and cultural appropriation, I ran into this website. Pocahontas porn? I’m glad we know how to be classy, Internet. (Cue me slamming my head into my computer). There are so, so many things wrong with this website I don’t know where to start. But, as The Rules of the Internet clearly states, “There is porn of it, no exceptions”. So I really should have been prepared for this, right?

For those of you who haven’t spent the last week doing research on Pocahontas, I’ll give you a quick historical rundown. After they realized openly oppressing thousands indigenous people was probably not the best PR move, early European colonizers starting looking for ways to justify their actions. Native American women enjoyed relatively more sexual freedom than their European counterparts. This “deviant” sexuality, which had to be a result of uncivilized savagery, was one of the primary excuses Europeans made for colonialism.

Pocahontas is probably the clearest example of European men’s anxiety, and ultimate control of, indigenous sexuality. The popular, romanticized story of Pocahontas originates from the first hand accounts of John Smith. Smith’s story is pretty sketchy; in 1608 he said he met Pocahontas months after he was kidnapped and released, but in 1616 he said Pocahontas saved him from murder while he was kidnapped. Fast-forward a few years: Smith is back in England, Pocahontas is married, and tensions between European colonists and Native Americans are high. The colonists kidnap Pocahontas and tell her dad, Powhatan, to hand over their new guns in exchange for Pocahontas. He refuses, so the colonists take Pocahontas back to Jamestown. Pocahontas learns English and Christianity, gets baptized, changes her name to “Rebecca”, and marries European colonist John Rolfe.

By the time she died (only three years after her marriage to Rolfe), Europeans had fused religious and moral justifications for colonialism so tightly with historical fact that the Pocahontas myth could not be separated from reality. Pocahontas became a model Native American, ditching her crazy native sex appeal and transforming into a classy European lady. It’s really strange that Pocahontas, a woman who was politically active and newly literate, didn’t leave any personal record of her life. We don’t know anything about her feelings towards Europeans, especially her kidnap conversion and marriage. Was she cool with everything, was she forced into it, or was it some combination of both? Because she left this historical vacuum, Europeans were able to speak for her in order to support their own goals. Basically, Pocahontas became the (probably unwilling) figurehead for colonialism.

Now, back to the porn. Why is the site so shitty and offensive? First off, it uses the animated characters in Disney’s Pocahontas. The film is neocolonialist, which means it uses progressive movements like feminism and environmentalism to make colonialism seem kind and essential. Disney changes an already screwed up history by implying Smith and Pocahontas were an item. Smith’s triumph over the greedy Governor Ratcliffe, suggests that, when the right, super-hot blonde dude does it, colonialism is pretty cool. Disney appropriates Pocahontas, who was a real person before she became part of the colonist myth, and her culture in order to appeal to its largely non-Native fan base. Despite what Disney might say, Pocahontas exists to make the company money. The movie doesn’t celebrate Pocahontas or Native Americans; they’re there to generate profits. By showing Pocahontas, especially Disney’s animated version, in these pornographic scenarios, this website perpetuates colonialism and the stereotype that Native American women are sexually available.