Angela Varga: Pocahontas and Connection to Landscape

I grew up on Disney films. Looking back I realize that the storylines are cheesy and romantic, but I noticed something about one of my favorites. Pocahontas relays the tale of the Powhatan Indians and their encounter with Europeans and how Pocahontas falls in love with one of the colonists. This is all well and good, but the plot is not what makes Pocahontas one of my favorite Disney movies. The scenes where Pocahontas speaks to Grandmother Willow and the scene where she and John Smith frolic around the land are my absolute favorite parts. As a kid I just thought it was cool that Pocahontas could talk to trees and befriend the animals. Watching it now as I’m older I can see that Pocahontas had a deep spiritual connection the landscape so she could hear what the wilderness was telling her. There’s one scene where Pocahontas speaks to Grandmother Willow and she’s talking about a vision she received. Now that I’ve done more research on American Indian Vision quests I understand that her connection the landscape allowed her to receive this vision of the oncoming settlement and how to help her tribe with this problem. The other scene where she frolics with John Smith is just another example of her connection with the landscape. She sings about the colors of the wind and it’s an obvious illustration of her spiritual connection with the wilderness. I never knew that I could apply some of the ideas of our class to a Disney movie.