Suicide fantasy in Avatar?

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

it has made something of a comeback with the idea of Magical Native American people being more in tune with nature than the greedy white people. Unfortunately still considered normal in academic anthropology (albeit not as much as it once was), despite being/becoming discredited in popular media.

That has not been the case for at least 30 years that I'm aware of.(being from the time I started studying Anthropology at university in 1978) Nor was it common in the C19th,when Anthopology was based on the 'quaint customs' view found in "The Golden Bough". That attitude was used to justify colonialism from Roman times..

"The Noble" savage and "the wisdom of the ancients' have been perpetuated in modern times by the lunatic fringe such as the Theosophists,then Hippies in the 1960's. In the 1970's it was the fraud and fake Anthropologist Carlos Castenada.Today it's the New Age morons. Then there's Hollywood. A graphic example is the appalling tripe in the film 'Dances With Wolves'.