Hey! I'm indigenous (cherokee) and I just read your post about the blood bending being a metaphor for generational trauma, and I wanted to ask you if it was a topic you felt comfortable talking about, what were your thoughts on the puppet master episode, when Katara was taught bloodbending? This isn't a leading question, I just genuinely would be interested to hear another indigenous person's perspective on it. đĽş
Ofc it's a heavy topic too, so if you don't have the emotional capacity or even a want to dive into it, I totally get it, and ya can feel free to delete this ask all together.
Don't worry, I'm actually pretty open to talking about this sort of thing!
The Puppetmaster is one of my favorite episodes. I think it's very well-paced and it definitely does a good job reinforcing the themes present throughout the series. It puts a very tragic spin on the first time we see Sokka and Katara's village and seeing the Fire Nation ship in the first episode hits different after watching it. I think the scene where it shows the waterbenders fading away until Hama is the only one left in her flashback is very effective in its use of imagery.
I'm less thrilled about how the fandom insists that Hama did nothing wrong.
Yes, Hama is a Native elder woman with a lot of trauma. That doesn't mean she can't be toxic and cruel. The fandom has some major issues when it comes to accepting that female Water Tribe characters can be complex people who greatly impact the plot and setting with their choices. It's probably the racism.
I read something about Mae Whitman (the voice of Katara) saying that this episode was very tough because of how emotional it is, and i can see why. Katara has spent her entire life in fear, knowing that for some reason, the Fire Nation came after people like her. She found someone from her culture, someone who can answer her questions, a survivor. But this newfound mentor, this person who was a victim but made it out alive just like her, to whom she feels she owes alliegeance because they faced the same violence, turns around and says "I went through this so you have to live through it too." And no amount of "please" or "you don't have to do this" makes her stop.
Not until Katara makes her stop.
There's definitely a struggle being Native because you're supposed to have other Natives' backs because racists will look for inconsistencies and twist it into something that supports whatever dumb shit they think justifies our extinction. It can be hard to speak up if one of your own has hurt you because then you open up your entire community and more to criticism, knowing that most of it (for example "they sit around getting money from the government") is entirely undue and little if anything will actually be done to help you.
When Katara cries at the end of that episode, it's because she thought Hama was someone she could trust. She thought that Hama could be proof that you can suffer the worst and still be someone who doesn't take that suffering and inflict it on weaker people in turn. But that wasn't the case. Hama took a product of her trauma and hatred and pushed it on Katara. Hama kept that cycle going, used Katara for the exact purpose of keeping that cycle going. And some part of Katara is terrified she'll perpetuate it too, and she has good reason, she almost does in The Southern Raiders.
I think Hama could have done with being humanized more, maybe having what she does built up over a few episodes and then it's like a "so all those rumors, they were about you?" moment. But I don't think it's fair to say that she does nothing for Native fans as she is. I have grown up and gone to school with kids who dealt with anti-Native racism, both personally and with how it's affected earlier generations, and were beaten, treated as a burden, neglected, or otherwise unsafe in their own homes. I have my own family drama I don't talk to anyone about that has scarred me in ways I'll never be able to forget. There's value in that pain being validated.
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