Audio project tells the true story of Pocahontas from an Indigenous perspective

The story of Pocahontas has long been romanticized as a fairytale about the love between an English captain and an Indigenous princess. A group of Indigenous creatives are now dispelling that myth, which they say could not be further from the cruel and disturbing truth about her life.

Using Pocahontas’ birth name, “Missing Matoaka” is a project that tells a factually accurate account that is far removed from that in numerous films made about her life.

It is an alternate audio track to a well-known movie about her, told from an Indigenous perspective, using Indigenous instruments and voices to ensure authenticity. The project, supported by Indigenous arts and culture publication, Muskrat Magazine, was created by a team that included Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee-Cree writers from Chippewas of the Thames and the Michel Band, Poundmaker Cree and Métis voice talent, with a member of Oneida Nation of the Thames helming creative development.

The makers suggest playing the track — which includes narration, dialogue and music — while simultaneously watching a Pocahontas film on mute.

“This is not a story about the power of striking love,” says the narrator at the beginning of the track. “This is not a story about glory, God, and gold. Nor a romance. This is a tragic tale of a woman who was assaulted and kidnapped from her people, from her identity.”

“Pocahontas is one of the first documented, missing and murdered Indigenous women and her story has been misrepresented for hundreds of years,” says creative director Derek Blais, a member of Oneida Nation of the Thames.

Blais says over the years, every detail of the story has been altered to the point that what we now know about Pocahontas is completely false.

“Most of the stories about her get everything wrong, starting with her age — she was only 10 years old when she first encountered John Smith. Unlike the false narrative, she didn’t abandon her people. The European invaders kidnapped her and held her hostage, where she was sexually assaulted and forced to marry one of her captors as a condition of her release,” explains Blais. “She would never actually be truly free again as she was taken from Turtle Island, taken from her homelands and paraded around Europe as an example of successful colonization. Then she died from poisoning while fleeing England when she was just 20 years old.”

Blais says “Missing Matoaka” aims to not only tell her truth, but also highlight how the misrepresentation of Indigenous women directly contributes to violence against them.

“The Indian princess stereotype, the squaw, even the savage — these are stereotypes that we know, through our communities and through studies … directly contribute to how Indigenous women are viewed and how they’re valued. [They] directly contribute to four out of five Indigenous women facing violence in their lifetime and also contributing to the fact that Indigenous women are 12 times more likely to go missing or be murdered than any other demographic group in Canada,” says Blais.

Screenwriter Lauren DeLeary, who is Ojibwe and a member of the Chippewa of the Thames First Nation, says writing the script brought to the surface her own childhood experiences with those stereotypes.

“As I got to the end of the script, words like savage were being thrown around a lot and having to course correct that, but also let that be the problem that it is and pointing that out was hard because I have had my own experience of being called a savage,” she says. “I was reminded of the time when I was a young girl and one of my very best friends decided that they didn’t like Indigenous people anymore and they wanted to be a cowboy, playing that role and told me I was a savage and that they wanted to kill me.”

Addressing those deadly stereotypes, the project supports one of the 231 calls for justice resulting from the national inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG).

Call for Justice 6.1 says that proactive steps need to be taken to break down stereotypes that hypersexualize Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQ+ people in the media. Practices that perpetuate myths that Indigenous women are more sexually available and less worthy than non-Indigenous women because of their race or background must actively be abolished.

DeLeary adds that the project required heavy emotional labour as she worked to channel Pocahontas in order to do justice to her story.

“There was a point where I really did break down and I was just crying, feeling the weight of her story and my story and countless stories that I know of personally and ones that I don’t know, the story of missing and murdered Indigenous women,” she says. “As you can imagine for weeks writing ‘I’m kidnapped, I was raped, I was murdered, my people were killed’ — that kind of speaks over your life a little bit, it’s kind of like chanting those words to yourself.”

Despite the challenges, DeLeary feels it was a necessary and important process.

“The truth is always worth it in the end. I step back from it now, even then I could take a step back, and know how important the work of it is and how important telling the truth of her legacy is,” she says. “I actually had some spiritual practices after I was done with the writing process to thank Matoaka for allowing me to write her story, but then be able to release that from my body. I think there was a whole process for me – to be in it and then let it go.”

DeLeary adds that the experience was made even more meaningful by the fact that after the project was complete, the team found out that her grandfather and Blais’ grandmother were at the same residential school.

“We had no idea. Before this project, Derek and I didn’t know each other. When we were discussing our tribes and where we’re from and our grandparents, we discovered that they went to the same residential school and their names are on a plaque very close to each other … so that was very spiritual.”

Blais says the project was also deeply personal for him as both a member of the Oneida Nation and someone with a direct connection to Indigenous women who have experienced violence.

“In our culture, women are everything … [they] hold a sacred position along with mother Earth as the creators and sustainers of life,” he explains.

“So when I look at this project and I think about Indigenous women, and I think about Oneida culture and women in my own family — when I think about my mother who was taken away from her mother in the Sixties Scoop, and I think about my grandmother who was forced to attend residential school — the women in my life have experienced generations of trauma. So to be able to create and support a project like this, to educate and answer one of the calls for justice, addressing very harmful stereotypes towards our women has been an absolute honor.”

DeLeary echoes those sentiments, saying it was important and meaningful to be part of a project that “course corrects” hundreds of years of falsehoods and misrepresentation.

“Not only was it important for me and just the short life I’ve lived, but it’s so important for my ancestors. Looking back on … my own grandfather who was taken to [residential] school and my great-grandmother who … used to say that she was happy that she was an ugly girl, because she wasn’t raped as much as the other girls — To be able to take one story that most people have heard about and course correct it, I think gives me a sense of peace knowing that more and more stories hopefully will be told truthfully and honestly.”

She adds that she hopes it leads non-Indigenous people to question what other stories about Indigenous people, culture and history have been “whitewashed and have been told in not the correct narrative and voice.”

“I just hope it’s a reckoning and awakening for people.”

Click here to listen to “Missing Matoaka.”