Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

Teaching English Language and Literature for Secondary Schools

Bc. Soňa Prudíková

Writing Inuit by Disney

Comparing Representations of Inuit and Native American Folktales

in Disney's Brother Bear

Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Jeffrey Alan Smith, M.A., Ph.D.

2015

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I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary

and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…............................

Bc. Soňa Prudíková

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I would like to thank my supervisor, Jeffrey Alan Smith, M.A., Ph.D., for his continual support, helpful guidance and offering practical advice. Further, I would like to express my gratitude to Mgr. Anna Veliká, PhD. for her support and help, particularly for her comments made in reference to the field of Ethnology and fairytales. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their patience and support.

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Table of Contents

Introduction.....................................................................................................................................6

1. Making Disney’s Brother Bear ....................................................................................................8

1. 1. Summary of the Disney’s Brother Bear Story ....................................................................8

1. 2. The Making of Disney’s Brother Bear Movie ..................................................................10

2. Inuit Storytelling.......................................................................................................................12

2. 1. Introduction to Inuit Story-telling......................................................................................12

2. 2. Coming-of-age in Inuit and Indigenous Tales....................................................................15

2. 3. Inuit Spirituality ................................................................................................................17

2. 4. Representation of the Bear in Native American Folktales.................................................19

3. Analysis......................................................................................................................................21

3. 1. Introduction to the Analysis...............................................................................................21

3. 2. Summary of the Stories ....................................................................................................21

3. 2. 1. The Epic of Qayaq.....................................................................................................21

3. 2. 2. Brother to the Bears..................................................................................................22

3. 2. 3. Racing the Great Bear...............................................................................................23

3. 2. 4. The Bear Boy.............................................................................................................23

3. 2. 5. The Woman Who Adopted a Bear..............................................................................24

3. 3. Analysis of Inuit Features and Elements in the Stories......................................................25

3. 3. 1. Coming-of-age .........................................................................................................25

3. 3. 1. 1. The Epic of Qayak.................................................................................................25

3. 3. 1. 2. Brother to the Bears..............................................................................................27

3. 3. 1. 3. Racing the Great Bear..........................................................................................28

3. 3. 1. 4. The Bear Boy.........................................................................................................29

3. 3. 1. 5. The Woman Who Adopted a Bear..........................................................................31

3. 3. 2. Transformation .........................................................................................................32

3. 3. 2. 1. The Epic of Qayak.................................................................................................32

3. 3. 2. 2. Brother to the Bear................................................................................................33

3. 3. 2. 3. The Woman Who Adopted a Bear..........................................................................34

3. 3. 3. Brotherhood...............................................................................................................35

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3. 3. 3. 1. The Epic of Qayak.................................................................................................35

3. 3. 3. 2. Brother to the Bears..............................................................................................36

3. 3. 3. 3. Racing the Great Bear...........................................................................................37

3. 3. 3. 4. The Bear Boy........................................................................................................38

3. 3. 4. Representation of the Bear........................................................................................39

3. 3. 4. 1. Brother to Bears....................................................................................................39

3. 3. 4. 2. Racing the Great Bear...........................................................................................39

3. 3. 4. 3. The Bear Boy.........................................................................................................40

3. 3. 4. 4. The Woman Who Adopted a Bear..........................................................................41

3. 3. 5. Revenge.....................................................................................................................42

3. 3. 5. 1. The Epic of Qayak.................................................................................................42

3. 3. 5. 2. The Woman Who Adopted a Bear..........................................................................43

3. 4. Conclusion of the Analysis................................................................................................45

4. Writing Inuit by Disney............................................................................................................51

4. 1. Inuit and Native American Representation .......................................................................51

4. 2. Ambiguity .........................................................................................................................56

4. 3. The Indigenous Way of Telling Stories..............................................................................59

4. 4. Language............................................................................................................................61

4. 5. Spirituality .........................................................................................................................67

4. 6. Animation...........................................................................................................................68

4. 7. Music..................................................................................................................................71

4. 8. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................73

Works Cited...........................................................................................................................77

The Primary Sources ............................................................................................................81

Resumé (České) ..................................................................................................................83

Resumé (English) ................................................................................................................84

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Introduction

Disney’s forty-fourth full-length animated feature Brother Bear is “a story from long ago” as

the film begins. Set in the Pacific Northwest in the prehistoric past it tells a transformation tale

about a boy who gets turned into an animal. The film’s creators, inspired by bear legends, created

an original story set in an exclusively Native American environment, which makes it the first full-

length animated Disney feature to do so. Having included some elements inherent to the culture

of the Indigenous peoples of North America, it suggests the story takes place among Alaskan

Inuit hunters. This is what, according to the journalist and writer Mark Pinsky, makes the film

multicultural. As he points out, the first Disney tales were in the Western, thus European-

American, tradition. With Brother Bear, he suggests, the features have become cross-cultural

(Pinsky 223).

What kind of cross-cultural message does Brother Bear communicate to its audience? In

her essay Inuit Myth in Brother Bear, Tali Schroeder traces the elements of Inuit culture in the

film and she assumes the film includes some aspects of common Inuit traditions and customs, as

well as some elements of Inuit mythology and portrays the Inuit lifestyle remarkably well

(Schroeder 1). Indeed, drum dancing ceremonies, the influence of animal spirit totems, a

transformation element, animal spirits and shamanism are generally considered to be inherent to

the Inuit. The North Pacific landscape, fauna and flora and the Northern Lights play a crucial part

in Kenai's transformation into a bear. Furthermore, Kenai and his older brothers go hunting

caribou and whales, weave baskets and ride kayaks, which corresponds to the fact they are meant

to be Pacific whale hunters and fishermen, Alaskan Inuit. These are the most obvious elements of

the Inuit way of life in the film.

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While Schroeder in her essay is interested in the presentation of Inuit traditions and beliefs

and refers to extrinsic manifestations of the Inuit way of life, I am going to deal with Inuit and Native

American folktales and transformation tales and compare them with the film. I will explore particular

Inuit and Native American folktales to see how the film reflects their Indigenous nature.

In order to identify the elements of Inuit myths and tales in the film’s story it is necessary to first

explore the Inuit environment. I intend to explore Inuit and Native American myths and tales and

examine the central motifs in them. Further, I will look for similarities and differences in particular

tales and compare them with the film’s story. The main focus of attention will be the main hero in a

coming-of-age process.

The analysis will provide a good starting point for the further elaboration of the subject. How

does the film portray the Inuit and what kind of cross-cultural message is Disney trying to get across?

What kind of world view is articulated in Brother Bear and how is the idea of the Inuit nature

communicated to its audience? These will be the central concerns of the second part of this thesis.

In order to avoid confusion, I would like to explain how the name Disney will be used in this

work since it can refer to the person Walt Disney or the Walt Disney Company. By saying Disney, I

mean the Walt Disney Company. When I need to refer to Walt Disney as a person, I write Walt

Disney.

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1. Making Disney’s Brother Bear

1. 1. Summary of the Disney’s Brother Bear Story

The last Disney 2D animated feature Brother Bear is the coming-of-age story of a young Inuit

hunter who goes on a journey of self-discovery to grow up and become a man. The story is set in the

ice-ages and draws on the mythology of Native people of The Pacific Northwest while incorporating

some traditional Inuit beliefs about the spiritual world and transformation.

Kenai, the youngest of three brothers, is about to enter his adulthood by receiving a sacred

totem at a special manhood ceremony, a symbol of guidance through life. Spirits, according to

traditional Inuit beliefs can affect people's lives and can be controlled by totems. Kenai's brothers

already wear their totems: Sitka, the oldest brother, has the eagle of guidance and Denahi wears the

wolf of wisdom. Kenai, much to his surprise receives a bear of love. The animal totem not being what

he had expected is the reason for Kenai's great disappointment. He despises bears and is mocked

about his totem by Denahi who considers the bear of love to be rather unmanly. Kenai himself hoped

his totem would express bravery, strength and greatness and feels frustrated.

When a bear destroys a basket and steals a catch of fish because Kenai did not tie it up

properly, he decides to pursue the bear. His brothers follow Kenai to stop him, but he has already

attacked the bear. The bear fights back and the two older brothers try to help Kenai which results in

Sitka's death. Enraged, Kenai then wrongfully and needlessly kills a female bear in revenge for the

death of his oldest brother who is then transformed into an eagle, his totem animal. As a consequence

of killing the bear, Kenai himself is transformed into one. Encouraged by the village shaman, he sets

out on a journey to find the mountain and “the place, where the lights touch the earth”, the only place

where he can turn back into his human form.

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On his way to the Northern Lights, he meets his little companion, a chatty but cute bear cub.

The two become friends and Kenai in his bear form starts little by little to take care of Koda who has

recently lost his mother. The two set out on a long journey to reach the place where the lights touch

the earth near the Salmon Run. Simultaneously, they are hunted by Denahi who, following the

example of his younger brother, decides to track down and kill Kenai, the bear who he believes took

his brother's life. This is a great opportunity for Kenai to overcome the prejudice, to see the world

from a different perspective and to learn a lesson of love, empathy and brotherhood.

When the two bears reach the end of their journey at the Salmon Run they engage in storytelling.

Koda tells the story of his mother who fought human hunters and Kenai finally realizes what he did.

The moment Kenai realizes the bear he killed was Koda's mother he runs away horrified by what he

has done.

The story culminates on a mountain peak where Eagle Sitka, Denahi, Kenai and Koda all

meet once again and Kenai has to make a choice as to whether to remain a bear and make up for his

previous mistake or become a human again. He chooses to stay with Koda, and thus to “become a

man by becoming a bear”.

Brother Bear is the last traditional animated feature released by Disney and makes the most of

hand-drawn animation. The story is set in the Pacific Northwest and offers breathtaking beautiful

views of the Alaskan countryside. The images of the Northern Lights, river rapids, glaciers and

landscape are stunning. Music and lyrics composed by Phil Collins and Mark Mancina are an

important part of the film. They help to get across the most important message of brotherhood,

tolerance and love.

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1. 2. The Making of Disney’s Brother Bear Movie

The stories of Disney animated features find their inspiration in various ways; most of them

are inspired by classic fairy tales or classic myths. The process of creating the film story of the full-

length animated feature Brother Bear was more complicated. As an editor, writer and illustrator H.

Clark Wakabayashi claims in the book of the same name, in the beginning, there was just the idea of a

bear story in a grand setting inspired by the Hudson River School of painting, somewhere in the

America's wilderness, perhaps the Rocky Mountains (Wakabayashi 16). As regards the setting, it was

Alaska that finally caught the attention of the movie’s creators. The story, however, took much longer

to create and settle on. Making the film took over seven years and most of the time there was only a

vague plot. The film’s creators devoted most of their time to developing the main characters and the

setting. The authors, lacking a good story line, finally decided to do research on Native American bear

myths and folktales (Wakabayashi 40). What they found were the stories of people transforming into

animals as a part of coming-of-age rituals and animals acting as people.

What these stories as a whole offered was a view of a world in which the animal community,

beyond simply sharing the same space as its human counterpart, was also seen to represent

certain life-ways, values, and wisdom. People gained from this wisdom in many ways – by

observation, by interaction, and even by becoming the animal itself (Wakabayashi 42).

In The Gospel according to Disney Mark Pinsky suggests the film’s authors Chuck Williams,

a development executive and producer at Florida Animation Studio, and his co-writer Aaron Blaise

were directly inspired by “Native American myths and transformation tales” (Pinsky 220). According

to most film reviews available on the Internet, the main character is believed to represent an Inuit boy.

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This shared assumption is supported by the setting and some obvious elements of Inuit culture in the

film. The story takes place in an unspecified time, sometime at the end of the last Ice Age.

As has already been said, it took the film’s writers several years to bring the story to its final shape.

The first idea, after reading Native American myths, was the story of a boy who is born as a shape

bender and becomes rebellious and bitter toward his father, who is never around for him

(Wakabayashi 42). There is a Native American tale by the Pueblo Indians that contains the same

motif. The Bear Boy is the story of a boy whose father mourned the death of his wife and neglected

the boy's education which resulted in the boy getting lost in the wilderness and finding refuge with a

bear family. In the original Disney version, as well as in the Pueblo tale, the boy develops a

relationship with a bear and learns his lesson about life and love but, unlike in the Pueblo tale, he

himself is transformed into a bear. Even though, this was not the final version of the story,

brotherhood, forgiveness, learning an important life lesson and initiation into manhood remained the

main messages of the film.

The film’s story is the result of several years of work inspired by Indigenous myths and tales

that have been passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth and which have always

played a crucial role in children’s education and the social life of the community. They have been a

very specific part of the Inuit way of life. As Zacharias Kunuk, an aboriginal person and a filmmaker

says: “…there are different ways to tell the same story. People in Igloolik learned through storytelling

who we were and where we came from for 4000 years without a written language” (Kunuk). With the

art of Inuit storytelling being the center of Inuit culture, I feel it is worthwhile to elaborate on the

subject a little.

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2. Inuit Storytelling

2. 1. Introduction to Inuit Story-telling

The Indigenous people of Arctic Canada, Alaska and Greenland have told traditional tales and

legends for more than one thousand years. The largest collections of Inuit stories were collected and

written down by Knud Rasmussen and Henry Rink who recorded the stories on their travells in

Greenland and Canada. A valuable source of information of Indigenous story-telling were the books

by Anna Birgitta Rooth, an important Swedish folklorist who studied the storytelling of the

Athabascan Indians and the Eskimos of Northern Alaska. In her book Customs and Beliefs among the

Athabascan Indians and the Eskimos of Northern Alaska, she presents a collection narratives and

songs. In interviews with the Inuit, she gives an authentic account of Inuit beliefs and traditions.

The stories are meant to educate as well as entertain people and have been passed down from

generation to generation with little or no interruption. They have been transmitted orally through

storytellers since there is no tradition of written records among the Native people of North America’s

Arctic regions. As everyone knows, there is a great tradition of storytelling among the Inuit, says

Peter Pitseolak, an Inuit photographer, sculptor, artist and historian (Pitseolak 11). The wisdom of

traditional culture was passed on to the young through a rich collection of remembered stories and

songs (Jackson 230). They were stories about animals turning into people or acting as humans. The

stories played an important role in up-bringing of children. People, including children, gathered at

one place in the evening where one or two storytellers would take as long as a month telling one

story. “Eskimo stories often came with venues. Some would be told to children and grandchildren on

domestic occasions or at particular camps” (Chandonnet in Oman VIII). Some stories were told

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during the different hunting seasons and there were also special stories told in winter or summer

(Rooth, The Importance of Storytelling 19).

A frequent and common theme in the stories of Indigenous people is transformation into

animals and animals into people. Ann Chandonnnet, a poet and journalist and a resident of Alaska,

suggests that “perhaps the most unusual aspect of Northwest stories is the theme of transformation”

(Oman VIII). Animals change into people and people change their shapes and become animals. As we

shall see in the story of Qayak, the transformation in the Inuit’s understanding is rather different from

transformation in the Western tradition. “It is a permanent ability to change shape” (Oman VIII). The

theme of transformation is closely related to the Inuit belief that all objects, or living things or beings,

have a spirit. “Man as well as animals have both, soul and body. It is quite independent of the body,

and even able to leave it temporarily and return to it” (Rink 36). This system of beliefs is a form of

animism which represents the main ideas of Inuit traditional beliefs. The Inuit animistic beliefs should

be mentioned here mainly because they often play a crucial role in their traditional tales. Rane

Willerslev, a Danish anthropologist, and the author of articles on animism and other anthropological

topics, defines animism as follows:

The traditional term for this set of beliefs, whereby nonhuman animals (and even nonanimals

such as inanimate objects and spirits) are endowed with intellectual, emotional, and spiritual

qualities paralleling those of human persons, is animism. (Wellerslev 2)

Apart from transformation and respect for animals, other common themes in Northwest traditions

include, for example, revenge, coming-of-age, loyalty or courage. As Chandonnet claims, respect for

tradition and responsibility to the tribe (Chandonnet in Oman IX) are also often expressed in their

stories.

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The Inuit people occupy a great area of land and the distances between individual groups are

enormous which gives no chance for communication. As the stories have been handed down by the

word of mouth, the storytellers needed to be fairly accurate when recounting traditional tales.

“Generally, even the smallest deviation from the original version will be taken notice of and

corrected. This circumstance accounts for their existence in unaltered shape through [the] ages” (Rink

85). Apart from their educational and entertaining function, the tales reflect Inuit traditions and

culture. With the absence of written records, they convey the Inuit’s experiences, customs, traditions

and beliefs and are very often part of their practical knowledge. The Inuit believe the myths and tales

to be truth. The myths happened in the same localities that the Indians live in, fish and hunt (Rooth

63). As James Tobuk in an interview with Rooth says: “Most Eskimos like me I don't care to listen, I

[don't] care to listen to legends. I care to listen to some true story, not legend”. What he suggests is

that there is nothing “impossible” and “not quite natural”, as he puts it, in Eskimo tales (Rooth 23).

Mame Jackson describes the nature of the Indigenous people’s traditional tales as follows:

Just as the spheres of animals and humans merged in their daily experience, so did the spheres

of physical and spiritual realities merge in the universe as they understood it. Stories of

magical transformations and spirit flights abound in traditional Inuit lore, as do reports of the

amazing feats of shamans who, with their spirit helpers, could summon powers to intervene

and alter the expected course of human and natural events. (Jackson 230)

Indigenous traditional stories might be difficult to understand unless we forget all about “the

primacy of Western metaphysics over Indigenous people's understanding” (Wellreslev 3). While in

the Western tradition there are elements such as travelling of souls, spirits, animal people and

transformation usually part of magic, from the Inuit's perspective, they are taken seriously. Although

the stories seem somehow unreal in the Western tradition of thinking and storytelling and include

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elements which are foreign to a non-Indigenous audience, it is obvious they were part of the Inuit’s

everyday reality, as the collection of recorded and transcribed interviews with Alaskan Eskimos by

Anne Rooth suggests: “Daddy tell me some old time stories, the time I get my blanket ready then the

old dad he started to tell oldtime story. You see I go to sleep…All my life I could remember a lot of

story what my daddy tell…” (Rooth 263).

With respect to the oral tradition of Inuit tales, there was little awareness of their form as they

were not meant for the wider public. Once they were written down on paper, they became somewhat

static in their form. Let me add a brief note on terminology to avoid misunderstanding . Inuit and

Native American folktales are difficult to classify and they are, in most cases, simply called ‘stories’

as, for example, in Ann Rooth’s book The Importance of storytelling or in Lela Oman's The Epic of

Qayak. Elsewhere they are also called myths, tales, folktales or legends. For the purpose of this work

I chose to use the terms stories, tales or folktales as ‘myths’ and ‘legends’ have their precise

definitions in a European context which cannot be applied to Native American and Inuit storytelling.

2. 2. Coming-of-age in Inuit and Indigenous Tales

Brother Bear is a coming-of-age tale and the motif of passage from boyhood to adulthood will

be analyzed later in this thesis. Before I discuss the main character who underwent the process of

becoming a man, let me elaborate on this stage of life more in general.

All cultures including the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic regions recognize the time when

boys come of age and become men. Initiation into manhood was an important part of a man's life.

Stories of a boy who goes on a quest when the time comes are numerous in all cultures, thus it is

something we are very familiar with in Western tradition. As Joseph Bruchac suggests, traditional

tales may also help boys to find their way to full manhood. In fact, he believes the transition between

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boyhood and manhood has been taught for thousands of years through traditional tales (Bruchac X).

According to Oman, the hero almost always undergoes a quest of high severity (Oman preface IX).

The theme will be developed and analyzed later in this thesis, particularly in the stories of Qayak and

Swift Runner.

As the sources show, the Inuit have no special coming-of-age rituals and the initiation into

manhood largely depended on the man's ability to provide food and shelter for the family and take

care of his wife. As Patricia Grimshaw observed: “the characteristics associated with Inuit manhood

were related to one's ability to provide food for one's family and, of equal importance, for others in

the community who were in need. Furthermore, good hunting, modesty and independence were

certainly codes of masculinity and occasion for celebration, a symbol of initiation into manhood”

(Grimshaw 61). Providing food for one's family and for other people in the community forms part of

Inuit traditional values and is also a frequent motif in Inuit stories.

Despite the absence of coming-of-age rituals among the Inuit, there is strong evidence of

amulet presence. An amulet did not have to be necessarily connected with the coming-of-age ritual, as

it is portrayed in the film. Protecting spirits, however, certainly played an important part in the life of

an Inuit. Knud Rasmussen explains the meaning and function of an amulet as follows: it is the spirit

of the object, the spirit of the owl, the swan, and the ptarmigan, which come to one's aid when that

which symbolizes it is worn on the body (Rasmussen in Jackson 35). In other words, the wearer of an

amulet had a spiritual power and character of the animal he was wearing. There is a significant

evidence of various little objects portraying animals such as bears, walruses and seals that are

believed to be amulets and shaman's (tools). “An amulet is a personal and private magical object that

protects the wearer, endows him with special qualities, and enables him to propitiate the necessary

spirits who enable him to live life more successfully” (Jackson 35).

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2. 3. Inuit Spirituality

The spirituality of the Inuit is a broad term and reaches beyond the scope of this paper. It

should, however, be addressed here especially because of its large representation in Inuit stories,

as well as in Brother Bear. Motifs such as the travels of the soul, transformation, taboos and

amulets can be found in all the Native American stories I chose to analyze. Let me briefly touch

on Inuit beliefs. I will focus on the motifs which are present in the stories and will be analyzed

later in this work.

Before the time of European contact, the Inuit believed in “the powerful forces of nature

that affected their lives” rather than in the idea of a God (Wolfson 8). Their world was filled with

taboos and spirits which affected everyday reality. As has already been said, “The Inuit believed

that all living beings had a soul that defined their strength and character as well as their

appearance” (Wolfson 8). Furthermore, in the Preface of The Epic of Qayak we can read the

following: “When a loved one dies or is lost, he or she comes back in many different ways. Some

are born as a baby and some are made known through animals or in dreams that they are around

again” (Tyler and Brooks quot. in Oman XVIII). As Emily Wolfson suggests, ordinary people

could communicate with spirits by using “magical words that were kept very private”. Another

way to receive protection and help from the spirits was wearing amulets and “a magical charm, in

the form of a piece of fur sewn to clothing, or an animal tooth, claw, or bone worn as a necklace

or on a belt” (Wolfson 9). Although, the significance of amulets has already been discussed

above, one more thing is worth mentioning: “… Amulets were ordinarily acquired from the

parents during early childhood” (Rink 53).

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A person who was able to communicate with spirits and maintained contact with the

spiritual world was called shaman or angakoq. In An Encyclopedia of Shamanism, we find that

„Inuit angakut [pl.] were traditionally women. Men who were called to become angakut

transformed their gender as a part of their training” (Pratt 23). Shamans were able to see what

other people could not and some of them were very powerful. As Peter Pitseolak in his oral

biography recalls:

“Before I was born there were so many shamans. They had their helpers of course. They

could make helpers from any kind of animal, from worms, bugs and the spirits of dead

people…A long time ago they could cure people’s sickness…Aggeok’s grandmother used

to fly in the air; Parr’s mother used to jump on a harpoon to fly. One man had three marks

on his cheek for killing ghosts…” (Pitseolak 29)

Spirits in the Inuit world were good or bad and so were shamans. There is substantial

evidence of such beliefs and practices in numerous Inuit tales. In The Epic of Qayak, for instance,

we can find an example of a good shaman as well as an evil one. “The shaman was an old chief

that had never in his life hurt anybody's feelings. His reward for his good life was a happy

family” (Oman 49). Evil shamans were sometimes so bad they even took peoples' lives. “The

shamans that were her ancestors for they had taken lives through their supernatural power” (Oman

49).

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2. 4. Representation of the Bear in Native American Folktales

As archaeological research shows, an outstanding position among animals in Inuit and Native

American culture is held by bears. They are respected and feared at the same time. Neo-Eskimo

artists “made numerous carvings of bear interpreted to be amulets or representation of helping spirits”

(Jackson 25). The Bear, often connected with shamanism, was among the most often portrayed

animals and was considered to hold extraordinary power. “The reference is made to the bear as a

helping spirit, in fact the greatest spirit of all: as he who gives power to the shaman and provides him

with helping power” (Jackson 37). The bear is also believed to represent a healing power. In How

Muin Became Keeper of the Medicines, the bear makes a journey for people and brings back

medicines for them.

The motif of a bear is associated with help and threat at the same time, as in The Hunting of a

Great Bear (Swanton) where four brothers pursue a bear who is a kind of large and powerful monster.

Eventually, they all end up in the sky where they can still be found today. In Hunting a Great Bear

the bear is Nyagwahe, a monster with a great power. When the main character defeats him and pulls

one of his teeth out, the great power of Nyagwahe goes to him. A bear's claw or tooth was a symbol of

power and strength in Native mythology. According to the story, Swift Runner used the tooth of the

Nyagwahe to heal the sick throughout his long life (Bruchac 25).

It is often the case in Native American legends that a human adopts a bear cub or a bear,

usually female, adopts a human. There are several different versions of the Inuit tale in which a

woman adopts a bear cub. It tells the story of a great bond between an old woman and a bear who

becomes her son. The bear lives in the village but is eventually expelled by the villagers who are

envious of his fishing success. In Inviting the Bears, a small bear who had been a human being before

and who was captured and adopted by bears, acts as a messenger between bears and a human. Several

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tales deal with the motif of a lost or rejected child who is adopted by a bear family. Partial

transformation into a bear may also occur, as in The Boy Who Almost Turned into a Bear. The main

character is usually found by people after which the bear gets killed. However, the boy often adopts a

bear cub, his former brother or sister, takes them to the village and takes care of them until the cub is

able to take care of itself. Sigo, in Mooin the Bear's Child resolves to never kill a bear or its children

again after such an experience. Similarly, the main character in The Boy who Almost Turned into a

Bear considers all his descendants to be part of the bear clan and declares himself to be “one of the

Bear family”.

The bear in Inuit legends sometimes happens to be an instrument of revenge, too.

Kagssagssuk is a little orphan boy ill-treated by everyone. Once he makes friends with a giant who

helps him to become incredibly strong. The giant sends three bears into the village so that the boy can

kill them and show others how strong he is (Rasmussen 117).

There is a large representation of the bear in Native American tales and ceremonies. More

than that, the obvious and passionate attraction to the bear seems to be mixed with respect and fear.

Talking about bears was one of the taboos. On her expedition to Alaska in 1966, Anne Rooth inquired

about Eskimo myths, customs and beliefs. When she asked about bears, her informants disclosed the

following information: “Girls were not supposed to talk about bear, and men never talked about the

bear. They would never call the bear by name” (Rooth 33). They claimed that the bear can hear you

talking and if you talk against him he will kill you (Rooth 29).

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3. Analysis

3. 1. Introduction to the Analysis

Brother Bear is the story of a young Inuit hunter who goes on a journey of discovery and the

film is set in the Pacific Northwest, home to Inuit people. In Brother Bear as well as in Inuit and

Native American stories, motifs such as brotherhood, transformation, coming-of-age or revenge

occur. I would like to look more closely at particular Inuit and Native American tales and compare

them with the film to be able to see whether the film reflects any intrinsic properties of Inuit folktales,

apart from the most obvious ones. I will analyze and compare particular motifs such coming-of-age,

transformation, brotherhood, representation of bears’ character and revenge in the following stories:

The Epic of Qayak, Brother to the Bears, Racing the Great Bear, the Bear Boy and The Woman who

Adopted a Bear, to see how they are portrayed in Indigenous peoples’ folktales and in Brother Bear.

3. 2. Summary of the Stories

3. 2. 1. The Epic of Qayaq

The Epic of Qayak: The Longest Story Ever Told by My People is a traditional Inuit story

written down by Lela Kiana Oman who heard it in the 1940's from different storytellers and believes

the story originated in the riverine valleys of the Kobuk and Selawik (Chandonnet in Oman pref.).

The story or its parts are well known among the Alaskan Eskimos as evidenced also by the personal

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testimonies of people interviewed by Anna Rooth during her expedition to Alaska in 1966 (Rooth 14).

It offers some points of comparison that best point out the differences and similarities between the

Indigenous and Western ways of telling stories. Both characters are Inuits of similar age who go on a

journey of discovery. Qayak's and Kenai's adventure in Brother Bear have a similar setting, both

stories are set in the Pacific Northwest.

Qayak is the youngest of twelve brothers who, at the point of entering his adulthood, leaves

his parents and wanders around Canada and Alaska. He travels in his kayak or walks. The main

purpose of his journey is to discover the world and do good for people. On his quest he encounters

dangers and overcomes obstacles. He lives with animals and people and he transforms into a caribou,

pike, weasel and various other animals. At the end of his journey, Qayak returns home as he had

promised his parents. By the time he returns they are already dead.

3. 2. 2. Brother to the Bears

Brother to the bears is the story of an orphan boy who feels so lonely among people that he

wants to become a bear. The boy often goes off by himself into the forest. Once he gets lost and

wanders off to a small wigwam where a female lives with her two cubs. He stays with the bears and

desperately wants to become one as well. The female bear, although she loves him, sends him back to

his village to live with people and become a great hunter one day.

The main character is about the same age as Kenai and he also undergoes an important transformation

to become part of the human community. It is also a good example of a strong bond between a bear

and human.

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3. 2. 3. Racing the Great Bear

The story of Swift Runner is a coming-of-age tale in which the main character goes on a quest

on behalf of his tribe and chases a great bear with the help of several magical objects given to him by

his grandmother.

Swift Runner is an orphan boy who is brave enough to face an unknown danger while none of

the brave warriors are willing to accept the challenge. Although mocked by everybody, Swift Runner,

with the help of his little dog, pursues a monster bear for many days in revenge for the death of his

people. When he finally defeats it, he pulls out the great bear's tooth and uses it to heal people and

wake the dead with it. After returning home, he uses the tooth and his power to heal and help people.

3. 2. 4. The Bear Boy

The storyline of The Bear Boy is very similar to one of the first versions of the film story

(Wakabayashi 47). A boy, whose father does not treat him well because he mourns the death of his

wife often roams through the forest and one day gets lost. Similarly to the previous stories, The Bear

Boy is primarily a coming-of-age tale. The boy gets lost because his father neglects his education.

Kuo-Haya follows the bear tracks, makes friends with bears, and stays with them for some time.

While the boy is staying with the bears, his father tries and succeeds in bringing him back without

hurting the bears. The motif of bears taking care of humans is common in Native American stories

and it was also the original idea of Brother Bear story writers.

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3. 2. 5. The Woman Who Adopted a Bear

There are two very similar stories about an old woman who adopts a bear cub and takes care

of it as if it was her own son in Inuit mythology, the Woman and Her Bear and the Woman Who

Adopted a Bear. The Woman who Adopted a Bear shares some typically Inuit elements more suitable

for comparison with the film’s story. Firstly, it is partly a coming-of-age story which is convenient for

the purpose of this thesis. Furthermore, the transformation element plays an important role here. At

the same time, it is the only traditional Inuit story I have come across where a full transformation of a

boy into a bear takes place.

It is a story of love, hate, betrayal and revenge. Angudluk is a great hunter who is not only

successful but also generous and “gets pleasure from sharing his surpluses” (Wolfson 28). However,

his wife does not share his feelings and often gets angry because she is so busy preparing food for

other people in the village. One day a stranger named Tuku comes to the village and treacherously

murders Angudluk. Ituko, Angudluk’s little son, uncovers betrayal and is struck on the head and killed

by other villagers.

For five days, his grandmother sings songs for the boy’s dead body and then she buries him.

At the same time, hunters arrive with a live polar bear cub and his dead mother. The old woman

decides to take care of the bear cub who becomes her adopted grandson. And so they live, eat and

play together until the time comes when the hunters feel the cub eats too much. Once the old lady

discovers that the village people plan on to kill the young cub, they run away and settle in a cave high

up in the rock walls. The young cub goes hunting and brings the woman her favorite food.

Meanwhile, the people in the village are hungry and miss Angudluk who used to bring them

food. Angudluk is dead now and so they ask the old lady and her cub to come back to the village. The

old lady agrees and her son, the bear cub, goes hunting just like Angudluk used to and brings food to

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the villagers who grow fat and lazy. They even forget that without him they would starve to death and

resolve to kill him again. When they want to eat him, Ituko emerges from inside the bear’s skin and

kills everybody in the village. While in a rage, he accidentally kills his grandmother, after which he is

grief-stricken. In the end, Ituko gets married and raises a family, and lives in the village for many

years.

3. 3. Analysis of Inuit Features and Elements in the Stories

3. 3. 1. Coming-of-age

3. 3. 1. 1. The Epic of Qayak

Although not obvious at first sight, the stories of Qayak and Kenai have quite a lot in

common. First of all, Brother Bear as well as The Epic of Qayak are both epics. Furthermore, Qayak

like Kenai, sets off on a long journey on which he must achieve and prove his manhood. Transition

from childhood to adulthood has often been associated with quest among Native peoples of North

America.

Qayak, equipped with pebbles, magical words in the form of a song of power from his father

and a special ointment made by his mother goes on a quest and is prepared to leave the protective

love of his parents and face the ordeal. Thus, deceived by his father-in-law, he fights a one-footed bird

in an exhausting life and death struggle (Oman 37). He has a long and violent fight with a mole, a

prehistoric creature who had eaten many people (Oman 96) and he kills cannibals (Oman 94). In most

of the fights his magic properties help him greatly.

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Qayak's choice is voluntary. While Kenai has no choice but to go on a journey, Qayak wants

to “test himself away from home” and he “could not neglect what seemed to draw him to go beyond

the great horizons” (Oman 30, 32). Kenai on the one hand cannot wait to become a man but on the

other is not prepared to face the real world. He does not own any magical formula or help. He throws

his amulet away at the very beginning of the film. What he has in common with Qayak though, is the

severe struggle he feels he must fight. He kills a female bear in a fierce fight to revenge the death of

his older brother, and yet, more important battles await him. To become a man he needs to admit that

he had made a mistake and sacrifice himself. Such a motif cannot be found in The Epic of Qayaq.

Qayaq does not make mistakes and does not apologize for anything for he does only the right things.

The process of change in him is different. It is through gaining experience and discovering or

developing new abilities and skills that he passes from adolescence to manhood. He helps people but

does not have to sacrifice himself like Kenai who undergoes a more profound change within himself.

Qayak seems to be gifted and protected by some kind of invisible supernatural power as also

recognized by his parents (Oman 29, 139) and by Qayak himself when he finally addresses the

unseen force at the end of his journey.

As loud as he could, he said: “I have overcome evil with good in my many travels. There were

animals, birds and evil human beings. My power came from something great. Or someone has

helped me. If there is someone who has helped me, I need help now. There is a greater force

than I know, I need help now” (Oman 140).

Kenai, on the other hand, becomes a man through struggle and through learning from his mistakes.

There is no supernatural power to help him on his way. Being hunted by Denahi he realizes it is

wrong to kill needlessly. He learns tolerance through being the outsider and clumsy at the Salmon

Run just as taking care of Koda teaches him responsibility.

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3. 3. 1. 2. Brother to the Bears

As Joseph Bruchac claims, one of the most common rites of passage to adulthood among the

Native people of North America is the vision quest (Bruchac 14). I believe, the main character's

encounter with the bear family can be recognized as a part of his coming-of-age as well. The boy at

the point of his meeting with bears thinks he is dreaming. “Surely, this is a dream,” he thought. “I

have fallen asleep in the woods. In the morning, when I awake, I'll return to my village. But, in the

meantime, these animals cannot hurt me – for, after all, this is only a dream” (Nowlan 50).

The female bear becomes his foster mother and treats him like her own son. She teaches him fishing,

wrestling and many of the secrets of the forest otherwise hidden from men. Finally, the time comes

for him to go back to his village and make use of all the skills and experience he gained while living

with bears. He becomes part of the human community and a great hunter and warrior “of whom songs

were sung and stories were told by the campfires” (Nowlan 52).

Similarly, for Kenai, the encounter with bears was an opportunity to grow into a man. The boy

welcomes the chance to stay and learn with bears while Kenai strongly objects to becoming a bear. I

believe, they are two sides of the same coin. It suggests the necessity of growing up and the fact that

we all have to become adults one day whether we desire or object to it.

The choice of leaving the bear family is similarly painful for the boy as staying with bears is for

Kenai. However, it is the painful choice they finally manage to make that helps them in the transition

from boyhood to manhood.

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3. 3. 1. 3. Racing the Great Bear

The most prominent motif in the story is initiation into manhood. As repeatedly mentioned,

Swift Runner is a boy “who had not become a man” (Bruchac 31). His name is a mocking nickname

that other young men invented for him. We do not know his real name, neither the reason he is

despised by the rest of the people. All he ever does is to play with his dog or listen to the old people

talking (31). When he is offered the challenge of chasing the danger he accepts “without hesitating”

(31). He thinks he is the right one for the job because he is “worthless” and it does not matter if he

does not return. This is the first and probably the most prominent difference between him and Kenai

who is not modest and humble. On the contrary, Kenai is a young, strong and proud boy who does not

listen to what others say to him as we can see when Tanana, the village shaman, wants to give him

advice (Brother Bear 07.58). Kenai does not seem to listen to his older brothers either and it is out of

his pride and disobedience that he almost gets killed by a bear (Brother Bear 10.47).

While Kenai angrily throws away the totem given to him by Tanana, Swift Runner gladly

accepts his grandmother's advice and gifts. The fact he can bend his grandfather's bow means he is

ready to face the danger that awaits him on the trail. In other words, it means he is ready to become a

man. Given his grandfather's cap with four hummingbird feathers on it, four pairs of moccasins and a

pouch with cornmeal mixed with maple sugar he sets off on a journey. With courage and without

hesitation he faces Nyagwahe, a monster bear. Unlike Kenai, who does not know what to do when he

becomes a bear, Swift Runner knows how to speak with the monster because he was listening to old

people when they were talking. He also has to pass through a deep and thick forest but he is ready

while Kenai in his situation is helpless.

When Swift Runner wins the chase and wakes dead people from his village up, they do not

recognize him. After he introduces himself they notice he has changed greatly. “How can that be?”

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one of the men said. “Swift Runner is a skinny little boy. You are a tall, strong man” (37). Tolerance

towards those who despised him is one of the signs of Swift Runner's maturity.

As previously mentioned, Swift Runner would not have been able to win the challenging

chase if he had not listened to the elders talking. He would not have known where to aim his arrow

and would have certainly died. “I have listened to the stories of my elders. Your only weak spot is the

sole of your foot” (36). As stated above, we find a strong tradition of storytelling among Native

People of the Arctic regions. It played a crucial role in children's education and as Bruchac claims,

stories have been a way for boys to become men. We find a similar situation in Brother Bear where

Kenai with his little companion Koda also heads towards the Salmon Run to join a kind of

storytelling event held annually. Different species of bears tell their stories to each other about what

happened to them in the past year. The storytelling event has quite a different form as it is more

reminiscent of a family celebration. In contrast to Inuit storytelling there is more than one storyteller

and the stories are not traditional tales. They are rather adventurous stories or experiences of the bear

family. However, they also maintain the educational and entertaining function as they communicate

the common bear experience to the young generation of bears.

Both characters return home changed greatly and both of them have become men. Swift Runner

becomes a valued member of his tribe and Kenai finds his place in the human family as a bear.

3. 3. 1. 4. The Bear Boy

Kuo-Haya is a young boy who is about to enter manhood. To enter manhood, he needs to

learn to become strong and responsible. As his father “pays no attention at all” and is “blind to his

son's needs” (Bruchac 80,82), the boy meets his destiny with a group of bears. As well as Kenai, Kuo-

Haya meets the bears at the cliffs (80), though he does not fight with them but wants to play.

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Similarly to Brother to the Bears, the female bear and two cubs become his family and teach him

everything he must know to become a man. Both, Kuo-Haya and Kenai learn and reach their

manhood through bears. While Kuo-Haya wants to learn and welcomes the opportunity, Kenai

strongly rejects it. Kuo-Haya learns “how we should care for each other” (82). The bears teach him to

wrestle, run and everything else he needs to know. When his father comes to take the boy home, he

can see that he has grown up: “his little boy was now a young man” (83). Kenai, as well as Kuo-

Haya, learns how to care for one another when he meets his little bear companion Koda. Furthermore,

he accepts his lesson to its extreme: he sacrifices himself and remains in his bear form.

Kuo-Haya's guide to manhood is the female bear who acts as his father substitute for some time. His

father, however, realizes the mistake he has made, becomes a good father and teaches his son “all the

things a son should be taught” (84).

Although we know nothing about Kenai's father, his brother Sitka acts like one. In one of the

original versions of the story, Sitka was originally Kenai's father (Wakabayashi 47). It is Sitka who

has a talk with Kenai when he does something wrong and acts as his advisor (Brother Bear 9.35). It is

probably Sitka again who brings about Kenai's change and he is also the one who guides him and

protects him on his way (21.00).

Comparing the two boys, it seems Kenai, unlike Kuo-Haya, is not ready to accept his

manhood and grow up. The way he accepts, or rather does not accept, his totem makes his immaturity

quite obvious. Kenai's passage to manhood is dramatic and difficult while Kuo-Haya's is rather

peaceful and harmonic. Kuo-Haya silently but firmly rejects his father's help to escape from the bears

when he comes to bring him back. When his father calls his name, he “looks at him and then just

walks into the cave” (82) while the female bear is protecting him against his father. Kuo-Haya’s

maturity is reflected by forgiving his father. Not only does he forgive him, but he also gives him some

advice on relationships which his father seems to accept (84).

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3. 3. 1. 5. The Woman Who Adopted a Bear

Ituko is still a young boy who “has the wisdom of a great hunter” (Wolfson 31) when he gets

killed by the village people. Both, Kenai and Ituko, transform into a bear shape suddenly without

warning or preparation. They must both face an unexpected situation, although there is a slight

difference. While Kenai’s change is unwanted, Ituko seems to participate in his transformation into

the bear: “I took the shape of a bear to feed my grandmother,” (Wolfson 35). Thus, Kenai is changed

into a bear while Ituko changes into one. Furthermore, Ituko seems quite satisfied with his present

shape, while on the contrary, Kenai struggles. Not only does he feed his grandmother, but Ituko also

brings food to the whole village and voluntarily accepts to do the same job as his father. Despite

being a young bear, he is a great hunter just like his father was (Wolfson 32). Similarly Kenai the boy

is as impatient as Kenai the bear.

Kenai as well as Ituko are on their way to become men, although the result of their final

change is extremely different. While Ituko decides to take revenge and violently kills everybody in

the village, including dogs, Kenai is rather gentle and compassionate and finally resolves to keep

taking care of Koda to make up for his mistakes (Brother Bear 1.12.01).Ituko, on the other hand,

“raged through the village killing all the inhabitants, even the dogs who had nipped at his paws when

he was a young cub” (Wolfson 36) Kenai’s sacrifice stands in sharp contrast to Ituko‘s revengeful

behavior. As we can see, Kenai is truly sorry for what he has done. Even though Ituko mourns for

many days until “peace finally comes to him” (Wolfson 36) he does not hesitate to kill his wife’s

groom to be able to marry her afterwards.

In other words, there is no obvious difference or shift in Ituko’s character at the beginning and

end of the story. Taking care of his grandmother and doing hard work for the village people when he

is still a young cub show he is as responsible as when he becomes a young man. Ituko knows what is

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his purpose since the beginning. Kenai, on the contrary, undergoes a remarkable change. His views of

the world around him considerably differ at the beginning of the story and at its end.

3. 3. 2. Transformation

3. 3. 2. 1. The Epic of Qayak

In both, the story and the film, transformation into animals occurs and is of crucial

importance. The transformation element is of such importance in the film that the directors decided to

change aspect ratios at the point Kenai is transformed into a bear. Once he awakens in his new

physical state the ratio widens to Cinemascope's 2.35:1, the intention being to “give visual expression

to Kenai's altered view of the world” (Wakayabashi 76). The change in ratios and brightening the

color palette during the course of the film enhance the change in the character himself. It stresses the

difference between the two worlds, that of the animal and the human. Widening the view helps the

viewer see the world from a different perspective. The audience, as well as Kenai, suddenly find

themselves looking at the world from a bear's point of view which improves their understanding of

the idea of transformation.

While Qayak transforms into different animals naturally, Kenai must be changed into a bear

by his brother, Sitka. Although the motivation may be entirely different for Kenai who, unlike Qayak,

does not wish to become an animal, the result is very similar. Both of them undergo some kind of

change to gain experience and learn an important lesson. Kenai learns the hard way, he needs to gain

the experience of walking in someone else's shoes and his lesson is to learn empathy. On the contrary,

Qayak changes into various animals quite willingly to gain strength or escape a danger in accordance

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with the traditional Inuit beliefs about unity between humans and animals. Thus, on one occasion

Qayak decides to become a caribou to learn the way they move, live and think (Oman 68). In some

other instances he turns into a weasel to move silently and enter an abode of his enemy (Oman 75).

While Qayak regards this kind of experience as beneficial and appreciates it, Kenai is appalled and

horrified. Qayak, like Kenai, is a bit clumsy at first but eventually they both get used to their new

forms. It takes much longer for Kenai who obviously feels more human than animal even at the end

of the film. At the Salmon Run, in two thirds of the way through the film, where he meets different

types of bears and is terrified by their size, his reactions are entirely human. It is the same sequence in

the film where he still proves to be very clumsy and is not able to catch any salmon (57.25).

In Kenai's as well as in Qayak's case the change proves to be beneficial. However, the kind of

transformation they undergo is different. We can see the change goes much deeper in Kenai whose

life is directly threatened. In the course of the film, Kenai faces difficult situations and learns his

lessons. He realizes what it is like to be hunted and what it feels like to lose a loved one and the

change can be visible in his behavior. It is different with Qayak, who experiences a whole series of

events, pleasant or dangerous, without any noticeable change. The development of his character is

less apparent than in Brother Bear.

3. 3. 2. 2. Brother to the Bear

In contrast with Brother Bear, in Brother to the Bears no transformation in the physical sense

occurs. Ironically, it is the non-transformation that attracts the reader’s attention. The desperate

attempts of the boy to become a bear or to be considered one, are touching. I believe the story is a

nice example of a vision quest that is in line with Indigenous people’s traditions. The transformation

of the main character takes on a different form and happens within him. As the presence of the dark

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forest suggests, the boy undergoes an inner journey. Forests have always been special and mysterious

places and they play an important role in all kinds of tales and stories. There are countless stories,

fairytales and myths all around the world that begin with passage through them, including Hansel and

Gretel, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast and many others. According to Joseph Campbell who

coins the term monomyth as a basic pattern found in many narratives, a dark forest represents the call

to adventure. “The hero goes forward in his adventure until he comes to the 'threshold

guardian'...beyond them is darkness, the unknown and danger” (Campbell 71). The boy has to cross

the forest on his way to the bears and similarly, he has to go back through it again on his return to the

village: “So the boy said goodbye to the old bear and to the cubs and went back through the forest to

his village...” (Nowlan 52) to become a heroe of his tribe.

Kenai, on the contrary, undergoes a radical change both physical and psychical and his

journey to adulthood seems to be more dramatic and less harmonious. Transformation into a bear for

Kenai may be the same as passage through the dark forest for the boy in Brother to the Bears.

However, more importantly, Kenai's external change is only the means by which he is able to change

inside.

3. 3. 2. 3. The Woman Who Adopted a Bear

Ituko’s transformation may be sudden, but it comes very naturally. As has already been said, a

transformation was a common theme in Inuit myths and is “the most unusual aspect of Northwest

stories” where people and animals often change shapes, live together or marry each other. Ituko says

he became a bear on purpose, so he could feed his old grandmother. He developed some human

qualities so he could become a grandson to the old lady. “They ate, played, and slept together”

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(Wolfson 32). He would even go hunting for the village people like his father used to. “Dutifully, the

young cub headed off onto the sea ice, but none of the men ever joined him” (Wolfson 33).

Kenai’s experience is considerably different, as has been discussed in The Epic of Qayak. Not

only is he not aware of the change which has taken place but he is horrified when he finds out what

has happened to him. Only very slowly does he realize what it means to be a bear. He is clumsy and

desperate. In contrast to Ituko, Kenai does not have any control over the change. He is, however,

given a choice as to whether to stay in his bear form or become a human again. This is not the case

for Ituko, who seems to change, or be changed, at the point of his death and smoothly passes from

one form to the other.

3. 3. 3. Brotherhood

3. 3. 3. 1. The Epic of Qayak

As suggested by the title Brother Bear, a strong focus is on the sense of brotherhood. The film

resonates with the ideas of brotherhood and friendship that are abundant and well represented in the

story.

Kenai has two brothers and the absence of parents emphasizes the importance of brotherly

love. When his brother dies his despair is so deep that he does not hesitate to revenge his death. Kenai

and his brothers have their counterpart in a couple of moose brothers. Rutt and Tuke who, even

though they are a clever parody, demonstrate the good and bad sides of brotherhood. Their encounter

with Koda, who feels lonely and has no brothers or sisters, highlights the importance of close family

bonds and friendship very well. Kenai, whose relationship with Koda develops during the film, starts

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to feel responsible for the cub to such an extent that he decides to stay in his bear form at the end of

the film.

Qayak has eleven brothers none of whom he has ever met before he setting off on his journey.

There is no emotional bond between him and his brothers. Qayak only feels responsible for his aging

parents and promises to come back and bring some news about his older brothers (Oman 32). When

he hears one of his brothers wants Qayak to help him to fight a big water mole he feels “overjoyed by

this” (117). However, the reader feels, Qayak helps his brother to fight the beast the same way he

would help anybody else on his journey. Qayak wonders where his other brothers are and expresses

his curiosity about how his brother found him. In a brief conversation, his brother explains, he sent

for Qayak to help him with something bigger than he himself could handle. The fight between Qayak

and the mole in the story is obviously more important than the brotherly bond between the two. On

the contrary, it suggests Qayak's superiority and exceptionality over his older brothers and confirms

the rest of the story: Qayak has no friends nor anyone equal with him on his journey.

Brotherhood in the sense of a dedication to community is expressed in the story through

Qayak's help to people and animals in the villages he visits. A strong sense of solidarity among the

Inuit can be observed when neighbours help their fellow villagers in need as is the case with Qayak's

father in law, Umialik, when he was a small orphan boy: “Their neighbours were always giving them

food and skins for clothing” (Oman 46). A similar motif can be observed in many Inuit tales.

3. 3. 3. 2. Brother to the Bears

The focus on brotherhood and close family bonds is prominent in the story. His loneliness is

the main reason the boy gets lost in the forest. He desperately wants to become a bear: “I am not a

man, but a bear. You are my mother and these are my brothers” (Nowden 51). He despises men for

36

killing his brother bears, and wants to protect them: “If they make such an attempt, I will attack them”

(Nowden 52). He even imagines fur and claws start growing on him so that he can claim he is brother

to the bears. No matter how much he tries to become a bear and belong to the bear people his bear

brothers never accept him. They become stronger and quicker at learning skills. When told by his

foster mother to go back to his village and live with people, the boy is desperate. Similarly, Kenai has

the horrifying experience of being hunted by his own brother and being a stranger in the world of

animals where he does not belong. The circle is complete when the boy returns back to his village and

becomes part of the human family.

In Brother Bear Kenai keeps coming back to his people and also becomes part of the

community. He becomes their brother as a bear, similarly the boy stays in contact with bears by

teaching his children bear language and being able to communicate with them (Nowden 52).

3. 3. 3. 3. Racing the Great Bear

As we find at the beginning of the story, Swift Runner is a small boy mocked by everyone

except for his old grandmother. He is a real outsider among his people. When the chief wants to offer

Swift Runner the challenge he even has to “walk out of circle” where the others are sitting ( Bruchac

31). His only friend seems to be his little dog and the two spend a lot of time together playing. His

little dog is also the sole important companion on his strenuous journey. Similarly to Koda in Brother

Bear, the little dog also shows Swift Runner the way to go. Both characters have a strong bond

between them and animals.

At the end of his journey, Kenai comes home to meet his people as a bear and re-establish at last what

had been once broken: a sense of unity between people and nature.

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What we can observe in Swift Runner, rather than brotherhood in true sense of the word, is

the boy's sense of belonging to “his people” despite the fact they despised him. He feels responsible

for his community. While Kenai returns as reformed, Swift Runner comes back to restore a proper

condition.

3. 3. 3. 4. The Bear Boy

In the film as well as in the story brotherhood is represented remarkably well. Even though

Kuo-Haya spends most of his time alone, people in the village notice him and care for him. They

observe his father's behavior and do not approve of it. When the boy gets lost they ask his father:

„Where is Kuo-Haya? “ When he replies he does not know their first reaction is: “Then you must find

him!” (Bruchac 81). They even help him to search through the canyons and follow the tracks along

the paths of bears. Finally, they find him and insist on his father bringing the boy back to the village.

The village shaman speaks in the interest of the boy and admonishes the father: “You have not done

well. You are the one who must guide your boy to manhood, but you have neglected him” (82). As a

result, the father realizes what he has done and tries to put things right.

Kenai does not seem to be lonely, he has the village shaman Tanana and his brothers to

support him. His brother Denahi is even prepared to revenge his death and kill the bear, though

unwillingly. We cannot see the village people's reaction to Kenai's transformation. Friendship and the

sense of brotherhood in the film’s story is conveyed through Kenai's relationship with his two

brothers and Koda and also through the annual gathering at the Salmon Run. Bears clearly express

their feelings about community when Kenai wants to leave: “Every bear belongs here” (54.42).

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Similarly, when Kuo-Haya stays with the bear family he learns “how we must care for one another”

(84) and his father has to promise he will always be friends with the bears. The strong sense of

belonging within community appears to be an important message of the story as well as the film.

3. 3. 4. Representation of the Bear

3. 3. 4. 1. Brother to Bears

Bears, holding such a prominent position in Native American Mythology, are represented in

Indigenous tales in a number of ways. In Brother to Bears, the bear is portrayed as a symbol of love,

strength and wisdom. A female bear adopts the boy and becomes his foster mother. She protects him

and teaches him the secrets and skills he needs to know to live in a forest. At the end of the story she

is the one who makes a decision because she understands the time is up. The boy has to leave the

bears to live with his own people. The bear sends him away, no matter how painful it is for her. “I

want you to know that it is because I love you that I am sending you away,” (52) said the old bear.

3. 3. 4. 2. Racing the Great Bear

There are two aspects attributed to bears in the story. The bear, Nyagwahe, is portrayed as a

dangerous enemy of people, however, once defeated his tooth has a healing power and Swift Runner

uses it throughout his life to heal people.

Kenai regards bears with hate and despises them. However, his feelings are strictly personal

and they are not shared by other people in the village or his brothers (Brother Bear 15.02). This is

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different in Swift Runner who offers to take on responsibility for all the people in his community and

whose journey is more reminiscent of a mission that needs to be fulfilled. Although he pursues his

enemy, he regards Nyagwahe with respect and keeps his distance until the time comes for them to

fight. Kenai, on the other hand, rushes into a conflict without thinking and the reason he attacks the

bear for the first time is hardly justifiable.

3. 3. 4. 3. The Bear Boy

Bears are regarded with respect and fear: “The people of the village always knew they must

stay away from these cliffs, for the bear was a very powerful animal” (80). The village shaman claims

the bears to be his relatives by which he suggests they are equal to people. He shows the boy's father

a bear claw he wears around his neck and he also instructs him: “They are teaching your boy how we

should care for each other, so you must not be cruel to them. You must get your son back with love,

not violence” (82). The father resolves to obey.

Apart from being equal to people, in The Bear Boy, bears are considered to be a model for parental

love: “Parents must always show as much love for their children as there is in the heart of a bear”

(82).

This is considerably different in the film. Bears are regarded with fear and Kenai, in

particular, hates them from the beginning, which results in his killing a female bear (Brother Bear

10.47). Conversely, people are considered to be monsters by bears (Brother Bear 52.13). The

sequence when Kenai and Koda are in a cave looking at a drawing of a man fighting a bear on the

cave wall is especially telling. The situation changes in the course of the film when Kenai has an

opportunity to see the world from a different perspective. When he meets the bear family at the

Salmon Run fish gathering, he can see how friendly and goodhearted the bears are and he is deeply

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ashamed of killing one of them (Brother Bear 1.00.48). Similarly, the father in The Bear Boy is

moved by his son’s change and has to promise never to hurt a bear.

3. 3. 4. 4. The Woman Who Adopted a Bear

The bear in The Woman Who Adopted a Bear is represented in more than one way. To the

village people who seem to be constantly struggling to survive and must face the danger of starvation,

it represents an enemy and a source of food. To the old woman, the bear is a compensation for her lost

son and grandson. Apart from his bear nature, the bear in the story has human qualities. He is

compassionate and devoted to his grandmother. He is also hard-working and responsible when he

goes hunting for others. It is in line with the Inuit way of thinking where everything has its spirit.

Whether the bear is perceived to be a help or enemy to people, his position is always prominent and

Ituko in his bear form never becomes an ordinary member of the village.

The sacred position of the bear in the film is communicated to the audience only through Tanana, the

village shaman, who gives Kenai a sacred totem animal to guide him through life at the ceremony of

passage to manhood.

Kenai bear, despite his physical transformation, maintains his human qualities, he thinks and

behaves as a human. The reason he inspires respect is only because of his great size and the danger he

represents to other animals. The other bears in the film are also personified and attributed human

qualities. They are chatty, clumsy, melodramatic and funny with their accents (Brother Bear 57.52).

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3. 3. 5. Revenge

3. 3. 5. 1. The Epic of Qayak

While Kenai's actions are driven by an intense desire for revenge, Qayak seems to

represent quite the opposite. He does not seek revenge even in a situation that would deserve it.

As we can learn from the text: “Hate was not in his heart. He was sent by his parents to overcome

everything that was evil” (58). Indeed, Qayak does not kill or hurt either people or animals except

in self-defense. “Never once did Qayak tried to slam Angatkuk against the rock, he only defended

himself” (124). Not only does he not take revenge, but he also shows compassion with his father

in law despite several attempts on his life, a motif unexpected in an Inuit legend. “Qayak looked

at the suffering old man and forgave him. He saw him with eyes that looked into the man’s soul”

(67). Motifs such as compassion or forgiveness are not present in any other tale analyzed in this

thesis.

In contrast with the other Inuit tales and similarly to Brother Bear, vengeance is regarded

as low and has bad consequences in The Epic of Qayak. “If only these evil shamans hadn’t tried

to avenge themselves, she’d been saved from days and days of sorrow” (72). Kenai’s attempts to

avenge the loss of catch and later his brother’s death lead to a number of adverse events.

Similarly in The Epic of Qayak “Someone has to suffer when someone makes a mistake. Jealousy

and greed and vengeance compelled them to take the lives of other people” (81).

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3. 3. 5. 2. The Woman Who Adopted a Bear

In Brother Bear as well as in The Woman Who Adopted a Bear, an act of revenge plays an

important role. The difference between the two lies in the moment when the act takes place. While in

Brother Bear the story begins with a revenge killing and it is very important for what will happen

later in the story, revenge culminates in the slaughter of his fellow villagers, animals and the old lady

in The Woman Who Adopted a Bear.

The behavior of Kenai, Ituko and even Denahi, is at a certain moment driven by the desire for

revenge. Kenai hates bears and decides to pursue the bear who steals the fish and breaks the basket,

even though his brothers discourage him from doing so (Brother Bear 10.49). When his oldest brother

Sitka comes to his help and consequently dies, Kenai’s rage culminates. He sets out on a trail of

revenge and pursues the bear until he kills it (Brother Bear 19.10).

Similarly, Ituko kills everybody in the village, his grandmother and dogs being no exception, in

revenge for the shameful and deceitful behavior of his fellow villagers. While Ituko’s killing does not

seem to have any serious consequences either for him or in the continuation of the story, Kenai’s

story, in fact, starts at the moment of killing the bear and thus, is crucial and the consequences are

extreme.

Ituko is sorry for what he has done: “As soon as he realized what he had done, Ituko fell onto

his knees and wept” (Wolfson 36). We cannot be sure whether he is sorry for killing the villagers or

solely for the accidental killing of his grandmother, however he “took his grief up into the cave…he

mourned for many days to dispel his emotions” (Wolfson 36). We may only guess and attribute his

guilty feelings to killing his grandmother. Ituko does not attempt to remedy. When his sorrow has

gone, he goes hunting. In contrast, it takes Kenai almost the whole film to realize what he has done

and to be truly sorry. As a remedy, he stays in his bear form.

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In Brother Bear, the motif of revenge is accentuated in the character of Denahi, who, although

reluctantly, sets out on a trail of revenge to avenge his brother’s death. Similarly in The Woman Who

Adopted a Bear, Ituko is killed in an act of revenge for uncovering the lie about the death of his father.

Denahi’s effort to take revenge helps Kenai to see the world from a different perspective and

understand what has done in a broader context and more depth. On the contrary, Ituko’s guilty

feelings about his previous deeds are not an obstacle to killing his future wife’s groom just because he

seems to be arrogant. When the little boy Ituko gets unjustly killed by a village man, literally nothing

happens, except for his grandmother’s mourning. Revenge is seen as an accepted part of life in Inuit

tales. In contrast, all attempts to avenge in Brother Bear turn out badly. Whether it is Kenai’s attempt

to avenge his brother’s death or Denahi’s effort to do the same.

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3. 4. Conclusion of the Analysis

Disney’s Brother Bear is the story of an Inuit boy, Kenai, who goes on a quest to become

a man. The film is set in a strictly Inuit environment which raises the question to what extent the

Indigenous nature was captured. As a part of my work I have analyzed five Indigenous folktales

to be able to compare them with Disney's Brother Bear and in order to see what they have in

common and how they differ. To find the answer I have compared the following motifs in the

tales: coming-of-age, transformation, brotherhood, representation of the bear and revenge. Since

Brother Bear is a coming-of-age tale, I focused on coming-of-age tales with a male main

character to be able to find suitable points of comparison. To see whether and how the film

conveys the nature and intrinsic quality of indigenous tales I decided to analyze and compare

particular motifs frequently present in the tales. The motifs are analyzed from the perspective of

relation to the main character.

Disney’s story presents an Indigenous teenage boy who goes on a journey to prove his

manhood which is in a line with most coming-of-age tales. The question I tried to answer was

how a boy becomes a man in Disney's story and in the five Indigenous tales.

Coming-of-age in Disney is in most cases, similarly to the Indigenous tales, associated

with a difficult quest that is not always optional. It is, however, regarded as something that must

or is desired to happen. Kenai as well as the other main characters, sets out on a journey. Some of

the other boys are, like Kenai, equipped with a special item to help them on the way. Thus, Qayak

and Swift Runner carry some special gifts to assist them on the way. What feels awkward,

however, is when Kenai angrily throws his totem away (Brother Bear 15.47). If we consider the

prominence of the bear in Native American mythology, the authenticity of such an act is thrown

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into serious doubt. The bear in the Inuit environment is regarded with considerable respect if not

with awe. Even Swift Runner who also defeats a monster bear keeps its tooth until the end of his

life to heal people. Sacred objects and words were highly praised and guarded for their magical

powers. Kenai, on the contrary, distrusts the spirit's choice and rejects the totem animal given to

him by the village shaman.

Although all the main characters eventually grow into men, Kenai’s change seems to be

the most prominent one. Perhaps it is because the main characters in Indigenous tales are less

complex than in Disney. Although we sometimes know they are sad or angry, rather by their

actions than words, their feelings do not develop in the course of the story. Dysney's characters

have fully developed and dynamic traits and they go through a big change. Kenai, for instance,

seems to be relatively immature at the beginning of the story. He, however, grows to become a

man. Qayak, Swift Runner, Ituko and Kuo-Haya are rather static characters. They are as

considerate, responsible or modest at the beginning as at the end of the story. Not that they would

not grow in the course of the story but their development is less obvious. While the Disney

character is very often surprised or moved, the other boys accept the events naturally as they

come with no inner conflict to solve.

Perhaps the biggest difference between Kenai and the other teenage boys can be observed

at the point of transformation into animals. Transformation into and from animals is as natural an

element in Indigenous tales and Inuit environment as breathing. In the Inuit world people marry

animals, as with Qayak who married a sheep which even gave birth to his first child, or adopt

them just as Ituko in the form of a bear cub was adopted by his grandmother. Most characters in

Indigenous tales regard their own transformation as something very natural, obvious and matter-

of-fact, if not desired as in the case of Qayak who wants to gain some experience when he turns

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into a caribou or to escape danger when he turns into a weasel. Disney, on the other hand, makes

transformation of the main character something extraordinary, unexpected and the main twist in

the story. The film creators want to stress the difference between the animal and human world,

which makes it quite the opposite of what the Indigenous people believe in. It is in sharp contrast

with the animist belief that everything has a soul and people are able to change shapes. If Kenai

was an Inuit boy, he could never be so surprised at becoming a bear. On the contrary, he would

accept it as a fact and a matter of course. Furthermore, Kenai is turned into an animal as a

temporal punishment for what he did which suggests the authors maintaine typically Western,

rather than Inuit perspective beause, from the animist point of view, it does not make sense. One

can change shape but it can hardly be considered a punishment because everything is changing.

There is no notion of anything similar in any of the five tales I examined. Kenai’s transformation,

however, partly serves the same purpose as in other tales where it occurs: To gain some

experience and to see the world from a different perspective.

One of the main messages in the film seems to be a strong focus on brotherhood. The

sense of brotherhood is enhanced by examples of brotherhood in both human and animal world.

Thus Kenai is the youngest of three brothers and the absence of parents in the film makes the

brotherly bond even stronger. When Kenai turns into a bear he is immediately joined by his little

companion, a bear cub Koda who longs for a brother. Furthermore, they are followed by their

counterparts, a pair of moose brothers. Simply put, the film is full of brothers, as the title

suggests. Having a brother in the film means not being lonely, having someone to spend time

with or someone to talk to when you need it. Responsibility, loyalty and empathy are among

other qualities attributed to brotherhood in Bear Brother. Ironically, Kenai bear learns a lesson on

brotherhood and solidarity among the bears at the Salmon Run.

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Rather than a family relationship, brotherhood in the five indigenous tales takes on a form

of solidarity and a sense of belonging together. Traditionally, Inuit people lived in small, family

based groups and depended on each other in terms of hunting and fishing. The strong sense of

self-reliance and interdependence is often reflected in their traditional tales. In The Woman Who

Adopted a Bear, Ituko, as well as his father before him, provides food for the whole village,

which is taken for granted by his fellow villagers. Swift Runner accepts an impossible task for the

sake of the whole village. Similarly, Kuo-Haya’s disappearance is considered as the responsibility

of the whole community and his father obeys the village shaman who orders him to bring his son

back in a peaceful way without hurting anyone.

Even though the concept of brotherhood between the tales and film slightly differ, they

have the same final message: Bears are considered brothers to people. Brother to the Bears and

The Bear Boy both stress the importance of brotherhood between people and animals. Similarly,

despite the fact Kenai remains in his bear form, he becomes a part of his former human tribe. The

song lyrics “Show us that in your eyes/we are all the same/brothers to each other/in this world we

remain truly/ brothers all the same” help to get the message across remarkably well.

As has already been said above, bears are generally treated with big respect, whether they

are a help or threat to people. This is also the case in the tales I have examined with both

elements sometimes present. Representation of the bear is diverse in the five tales I examined for

the purpose of this work. The bear can represent a dangerous enemy with healing power as in

Swift Runner, loving and wise mother in Brother to the Bears or a great hunter and companion for

life in The Woman Who Adopted a Bear. Nevertheless, in all the tales, bears are respected or

feared and there is something sacred about them.

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The Disney concept of the bear is far more popular than the Inuit tale would ever allow it

to be. The bear in Disney’s film is deprived of his sacred dignity. A noble and respected animal in

Indigenous tales is portrayed as an ordinary and merry character in Disney’s film. The bear is

personified and possesses a close resemblance to people. The little bear cub Koda is a chatterbox,

Kenai is a new confused and clumsy member of the bear family, the female bear at the Salmon

Run is as melodramatic as a woman can be (Brother Bear 58.26). The attribution of human

qualities brings the bear closer to the audience, however, it makes it less authentic from an Inuit

person’s point of view. Although Disney's reasons for doing so are understandable, it still raises

the question: What audience is the film made for?

The last part of the analysis deals with and compares the motif of revenge in the

indigenous tales and in Disney and two concepts emerge. Revengeful behavior frequently occurs

in The Eskimo Folk-tales collected by Knud Rasmussen (Rasmussen, Eskimo folk-tales). It is,

however, a motif not so frequently found in the five tales I decided to explore for the purpose of

this work. The act of revenge that typically occurs in Inuit tales can be found in The Woman Who

Adopted a Bear where Ituko and his fellow villagers commit acts of violence in a fit of anger.

People who take revenge rarely, if ever, suffer remorse. Ituko's sad feelings are the consequence

of killing his own grandmother together with his fellow villagers, not by the slaughter of the

whole village. Vengeance similarly to that in Brother Bear is not planned, rather it is something

that happens. In contrast with the film, it does not cause either surprise or remorse. Kenai, on the

other hand, feels pangs of remorse the moment he realizes what he has done and acts accordingly.

His wrongful killing is a necessity for the main character to develop and for the story to continue.

On the contrary, revengeful killing is not an event of big importance in the life of Ituko, despite

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killing his own grandmother by mistake. A few weeks later he kills a man again only to marry a

woman who belonged to him.

It appears that the indigenous tales and Disney use two different concepts of killing and

revenge: one that is crucial for the life and development of the character and one that happens at

random, as a sudden consequence of a previous event but without being of greater importance for

continuation of the story or the character development.

Despite the fact Brother Bear is a film about a young Inuit boy where the same motifs as

in Indigenous tales are present, their meaning and message appear to be slightly shifted. Although

they meet at some point, the underlying concepts are in most cases different, in some even

fundamentally different. The question arises as to what audience does Disney’s Brother Bear talk

to? In the following chapter I will elaborate on the message the film conveys in terms of

representation of Inuit people and their culture. I believe the previous analysis can be a good

starting point for further study of the Inuit representation in the film with the focus on authentic

portrayal of the Indigenous nature.

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4. Writing Inuit by Disney

“To start a story, for example, not in a linear fashion 'from the beginning', or to come into

a story without a preconceived beginning and ending, but rather with anything that

emerges at a specific moment in one’s thinking process, that relates back to one’s intimate

experience, and then, to proceed slowly from there … means letting things come to you

rather than seizing or grasping them.” (Tinh T. Minh-ha in Chambers and Curti 4)

4. 1. Inuit and Native American Representation

Brother Bear is in a sense an exceptional example in that it presents only Indigenous

culture. It is the only Disney full-length animated feature that focuses exclusively on Native

American culture in the northern environment. The film presentation of Native American

characters who were created by non-Native people deserves to be critically examined for its

accuracy and authenticity, whether these were the filmmakers' goal or not.

Animated films by the Walt Disney Company, as well as its other cultural products,

belong among the products of popular culture, more specifically, American popular culture. The

Walt Disney Company, one of the most famous conglomerates, is considered to be one of the

biggest icons of popular culture (Wantasen 4). As such, the films produced by Disney represent

and communicate to the audience some typically American values and ideas shared and accepted

by the majority of American people. Indeed, ideas such as tolerance, equality, goodness and

humanity, family values and looking to the future are often expressed in Disney films. As Ralph

S. Izard puts it, “One can look deeper into the Disney productions and find lessons there on the

art of living and in the values which generally are considered desirable in American Christian

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society. His films emphasize individualism, decency, appreciation of beauty, love for our fellow

man, fair play and toleration” (Izard 39).

A multinational media conglomerate of this size and influence is more likely to be in a

position to exert greater influence on our ideas and opinions than anyone else in this field. This is

the reason why Disney films have always given rise to much debate and provoked strong

reaction, ranging from widespread acceptance to the outright rejection of the ideas they represent.

Since the representation of the Inuit race and its culture in Disney Brother Bear will be the

central concern of this chapter, let me elaborate on the subject of racism and stereotyping in

Disney films.

As for the race and class differences, Douglas Brode, a novelist, playwright, screenwriter,

and a journalist who teaches cinema studies and popular culture, presumes that the cultural

impact of Disney on its audience rests in the “teaching of tolerance and acceptance through a

heightened understanding of the full range of diversity among members of the human race”

(Brode 17). More than that, he also believes that “the back to nature movement, radical

environmentalism … were introduced in Disney movies” a long time before they became the

mainstream (Brode 6). He goes as far as to suggest “that [Walt] Disney … was a single member

of Old Hollywood who set what would come to be called multiculturalism into motion. His

works challenge all those societal norms and once-unquestioned values...” (Brode 19). As he

further claims and demonstrates in particular examples, class and race do not make a difference in

Disney films (56). Disney, according to Brode, brings races together and portrays Native

American characters remarkably well for the period the films were created.

Just as the company is praised for emphasizing good values and promoting tolerance it is

often accused of quite the opposite. Disney films must frequently face repeated and numerous

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accusations, according to Eleanor Byrne and Martin McQuillan in Deconstructing Disney. They

include: “sexism, racism, conservatism, heterosexism, andro-centrism, imperialism (cultural),

imperialism (economic), literary vandalism, jingoism, aberrant sexuality, censorship, propaganda,

paranoia, homophobia, exploitation, ecological devastation, anti-union repression, FBI

collaboration, corporate raiding, and stereotyping” (Byrne, McQuillan 1).

As regards representation of race, Byrne and Mc Quillan, observe negative criticism

provoked by representation of “happy plantation workers” in Song of the South and pay attention

to Disney’s apparent “difficulty with black characters in the animated films” (95). They also

suggest that the level of “Disney filmic racism” has widened ever since, referring especially to

Aladdin and the “Arab boycott of Disney products in response to persistent negative portrayals of

Arabs in Disney films” (7). Further, they are concerned with the process of Native American

portrayal in Peter Pan and Pocahontas pointing out a huge difference between the two

representations in time. “Peter Pan’s monosyllabic, grotesquely bright red, misshapen, savage

“injuns” become a tribe of bronzed, articulate, civilized, beautiful people [in Pocahnotas]...As

red turns to copper, the role of “Indians” changes in relation to the demands made on Native

American cultures by white consumers and the debts they owe” (106). They accuse Disney of

heavy stereotyping and appropriating Native American characters in every possible way.

Portrayal of races in Disney is of concern to Nóra Borthaiser who, in her critical study, suggests

that “the evil characters in the film [Aladdin] have typical Middle-Eastern features”, while good

characters have “Western profiles” (Borthaiser).

It may well not be true and, perhaps, we can really agree with Brode and describe

Disney's portrayal of Native experience as non-discriminating and well-meant, nevertheless, what

exactly is the picture of Indigeneity that Disney films communicate to their audience? Is the

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intention of promoting tolerance and cross-cultural understanding successful? As Lorri

McDougall aptly points out “Writing that is not racist in its intention, can be racist in its function”

(Mc Dougall quot. in Groening 5). Further, as Foucault says, “The best of intentions can become

the tools of oppression” (Foucault quot. in Groening 5). Borthasier is not the only one to suggest

that Disney's interpretation of non-white races is mere re-telling of the Western story.

Appropriation of the Indigenous voice has been an important issue in post-colonial studies

and is of main concern to Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin who in their famous

book The Empire Writes Back lay the foundations for post-colonial criticism and provide valuable

material for understanding the mechanisms of post-colonial societies. Appropriation of voice

involves creation of a Native character by non-Natives on the basis of shared stereotypes or

imposing Western values on Indigenous traditions. As a full-length animated feature set in a

Pacific Northwest, Brother Bear emphasizes Native American culture and is among the works

that deal with the post-colonial subject.

Since the American filmmakers decided to create Indigenous characters, Inuit hunters,

they could not avoid the problem of portraying a different culture. Constructed images of

Indigenous people in post-colonial times “need to be interrogated for their accuracy” (Emelobe

211). Indigenous characters created by whites on the basis of common stereotypes are subjected

to various interpretations. Such characters displayed to the (white) public allow for the

reinforcement of popular stereotypes. The Indigenous person is offered, or rather imposed on, the

“white” view of himself, or, as Fanon puts it: “...he looks at himself through the white man's

eyes” (Fanon quot. in Nayar 8).What is the picture of the Inuit and how far is their voice

appropriated? The question I will try to answer is: Do Kenai and his brothers represent the

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Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest or are they “imagined and invented” characters, as

Emeka Emelobe suggests is the case in Hollywood's representations of Africa (217)?

I will draw on Renée Hulan’s book Northern Experience and the Myths of Canadian Culture

and examine representations of Inuit culture in Brother Bear. Special attention will be paid to

common stereotypes of the Inuit as a people who belong to the past and have special access to the

spiritual world.

The idea of the North is often romanticized and the North is presented as the place of a

great challenge and spiritual renewal which reinforces the perception of the Inuit as a non-

developing culture. I will focus on the tendency to present Indigenous cultures as “static” and

“frozen-in-time” as the opposite is true.

Finally, I would like to see how much effort the filmmakers put in the creation of

Indigenous characters and environment and what kind of narrative the story tells. Like other

cultures, Indigenous culture is reflected in stories, language and the way people communicate. I

will examine the means employed to encourage cross-cultural understanding and see how

successful they are in portraying Inuit culture and values. I intend to draw on the previous

analysis of Inuit tales and rely on a post-colonial theory.

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4. 2. Ambiguity

The first issue in Brother Bear I would like to address here is the issue of ambiguity.

Taking into account the fact the story of Brother Bear is, according to its authors, inspired by

Inuit and Native American legends, thus it is supposed to be something that really happened in

distant history, the number of ambiguities is rather disturbing. Whether it is the ambiguity of

source, time, place or language, it leaves a slight sense of confusion in its audience.

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It seems quite impossible to trace the source of the writers‘inspiration, since no particular

legend or tale is revealed in available resources. As we learn from Sitka, the narrator, at the

beginning of the film: “This is a story from long ago when the great mammoths still roamed our

lands” (Brother Bear 00:47). The first sentence uttered in English is, however, immediately

followed by several sentences uttered in “native language”. Given the fact that an ordinary viewer

has no access to the official script, he is not likely to either realize or find out what language is

Sitka speaking, even if this kind of information was included in it. The audience is left with a

vague feeling they are watching a story about an unspecified Native American, perhaps Inuit,

tribe. It takes some detective work and a piece of luck to discover the main characters are most

likely to be Inuit: Brother Bear is included among Inuktitut-langugage films according to

Wikipedia (“Inuktitut-language films”). Further, even if we consider Kenai and his brothers to be

Inuit people, their origin still remains rather a vague notion. Reneé Hulan notes that “Like the

‘Native’, the people of the ‘North’ are not always differentiated from each other in literary

representation but treated as having one pan-northern identity” (Hulan 29). This is exactly what

happens in Brother Bear. Despite the fact that Inuit culture is “not monolithic but rather varies

from region to region and can even vary in practice from Inuk to Inuk” (The Inuit way 2), we are

being introduced to a Native American character without a greater awareness of where he comes

from. This is what Hulan aptly describes as “timeless images” (Hulan 76). This kind of inexplicit

identity can reinforce the stereotypical images people create about Indigenous people. However,

“Identity, even for indigenous groups, is never static, but is ‘articulated’ and fluid” (Ashcroft,

Griffiths, Tiffin 164). On the contrary, The Inuit way: a guide to Inuit culture, a document created

to introduce modern Inuit culture and overcome cultural differences, is a proof that it is of special

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concern to Inuit people not to be seen as 'frozen in time': “Inuit culture is not monolithic but

rather varies from region to region...nor is it culture frozen in time” (The Inuit way 8).

At this point, I would like to make the observation that the importance of setting stories in

a particular area appears to be quite different in Inuit and Native American context. They, in their

written form, always state the place of their origin either under the title or at the beginning of the

story. Since Inuit stories were mostly handed down through word of mouth and were meant for a

particular audience, no description was necessary, I suppose. However, various Indigenous tribes

are proud of their stories and would claim particular ones to be their own as in the Inupiaq story

The Epic of Qayak: “Many tribes in Alaska feel that Qayaqtuagaqniqtuq is their own story.

Claiming it as their very own, they say, ‘It came from our river!’ ” (Oman XVI). Thus, instead of

a vague piece of information “This is a story from long ago” in Brother Bear, The Epic of Qayak

begin as follows: “In the lower valley of the Kobuk river lived two families…” (Oman 5) or

elsewhere: “Some went inland to the East, some went toward the North and one man and wife

went South to the mouth of the Selawik River” (Oman 5).

By setting the story in distant past and pre-contact period, the filmmakers avoid some

problematic issues, especially the period of colonization and inclusion of white characters.

Omission of white characters in the film emphasizes the past. Further, by setting the story in

distant past the film confirms Renée Hulan's assumption that “Non-Inuit writing on the north is

often preoccupied with two supposed elements of Inuit experience: Inuit access to the Stone Age

past as a “contact-traditional” hunting society, and Inuit access to exotic spirituality” (Hulan 60).

Brother Bear provides excellent examples of both by taking place a long time ago and being the

story of an Inuit hunter who gets turned into a bear by Spirits.

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The ambiguity of place, already criticized by Borthasier in Aladdin, happens in Brother

Bear as well. The only idea of place we get from watching the film is an abstract idea of the

North, which is supported by the occurrence of mountains, snow, caribou and, presumably,

Northern lights.

The animation of countryside and landscape in Brother Bear is breathtaking, to be sure.

The thrilling view of the natural environment is just beautiful – glaciers, soaring mountains,

tundra, winding canyons. What I consider to be problematic, however, is the small degree of

authenticity. The film draws much of its inspiration in “romantic images of America's wilderness:

the Hudson River School of painting” (Wakabayashi 16). As Disney chairman and CEO Michael

Eisner recalls: “...the concept for a new movie began with a simple but grand setting in mind –

the Rocky Mountains and the American West” (Wakabayashi 16). The animation process

happened in several stages and different types of locations were put together while creating the

setting for the film. The group of creators visited Sequoia National Park in California, The Grand

Tetons and Yellowstone National Parks in Wyoming, Kenai Fjords and Denali National Parks in

Alaska (Wakabayashi 57). What we can see in Brother Bear is a mixture of various

environments, their aim being to depict “living, breathing land” (57), not a particular place.

Furthermore, it confirms another argument made by Hulan that “representations of the north have

drawn on discourses…, such as the nineteenth-century Romantic fascination with the relationship

of mankind to the natural environment” (Hulan 5).

4. 3. The Indigenous Way of Telling Stories

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There are different ways of telling stories. The Inuit way of telling stories, as previously

described, is a very special one. What are the unique features of Inuit writings and oral literature?

And where lies the difference between Western (Disney) and Indigenous storytelling?

Our culture reflects in the way we tell our stories. People with no story do not know

where they came from and where they are going. “Indeed, literature and the art of 'storytelling'

are in some way the X-rays both of our culture and our collective unconscious, and can trace our

inner life both as individuals, as societies and as the so-called global 'village'” (Natale and

Buchhotz 14). The previous quote resonates with the idea of stories reflecting Indigenous

peoples' culture. As Renée Hulan points out: “southern writers write as if they can imagine the

Inuit to be whatever they want…” (Hulan 75). The decision of the Disney company to make a

story about Inuits from the pre-contact period confirms another Hulan's claim that “The

preference for past tradition, evident in the popularity of Native storytelling, places native people

in the museum with all the other extinct species” (75).

I like what Trinh T. Minh-ha, an Indigenous writer and filmmaker, says on the subject of creating

her stories and films:

Never does one open the discussion by coming right to the heart of the matter … to allow

it to emerge, people approach it indirectly by postponing until it matures, by letting it

come when it is ready to come. There is no catching, no pushing, no directing, no

breaking through, no need for a linear progression which gives the comforting illusion

that one knows where he goes…One can only approach things indirectly…

(Trinh T. Minh-ha in Chambers and Curti 3,4)

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Indeed, the most prominent feature in Indigenous writing, especially in longer stories, is

starting a story not in a linear fashion. The Epic of Qayak illustrates this quite clearly. The story

sometimes jumps back as certain situations repeat. The linear fashion is also broken by including

stories from times when Qayak was not even born yet as in “The story of big flood as it was told

by Qayak’s wife” or someone else’s story starts to be told as in “From another storyteller: How a

young orphan boy grew up to be the Umialik whose daughter became Qayak’s wife” (Oman).

There are two occasions in Brother Bear when the audience is presented with a storytelling event:

at the beginning of the film and at the Salmon Run gathering.

To the filmmakers’ credit, Brother Bear’s story does not start in a linear fashion either. It

starts to unfold when Sitka, the middle brother, tells a story of three brothers. The story is told

retrospectively from an internal point of view and we can tell he is directly involved in the story.

There is a little discrepancy in Sitka’s being part of the story “from long ago when the great

mammoths still roamed our lands”. However, including a storytelling event, one of the most

important elements in Inuit culture, is a brave attempt to make the film more authentic.

After Sitka’s introduction, Brother Bear story develops in a rather predictable way. When

I say the story is predictable, I mean it is such from other than an Inuit persons’s point of view. I

daresay so drawing on the previous analysis of Inuit and Native American folktales because I

believe, the story includes a lot of deviation from Indigenous culture. In comparison to

Indigenous tales it is too straightforward, I think. Trinh T. Minh-ha quoted in Ann Kaplan’s book

Looking for the other, described her approach to the creation of her films as follows: “... the films

are made to offer spectators many entries, many exits. There are multiple foldings, not simply

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different interpretations” (Kaplan 197). Seeing Brother Bear from this perspective, it fails to meet

the expectations.

4. 4. Language

“Language is the most complete embodiment of a culture and a story without its original

language is only a shadow of the original” (Chadonnet quot. in Oman xii). The previous quote is

made by Ann Chadonnet in the preface of The Epic of Qayak and applies to aboriginal stories

translated into other languages. In the course of time, the Inuit have undergone an extensive

change. In order for the stories not to be lost, they needed to be collected and written down. Once

they were removed from oral tradition and put down on paper the problem of oral versus textual

narration arose. She points to the fact that some cultural details are doomed to get lost in

translation, especially because traditional Inuit stories have been handed down orally in a way

that “the storyteller employs dramatic pauses, differing tones of voice, dialect or accents and

laughter” (Chadonnet quot. in Oman X).

Ann Rooth observed the oral styles of narrative technique in Northern Alaska and she

found it very different from the ordinary way of speaking: “They spoke slowly, pitching their

voices rather low. Sometimes they whispered, thus stressing the mystery of the stories… she told

the story in a slow and suggestive manner without gestures and without mimicry” (Rooth, The

importance of storytelling 57).

My argument is that creation of a film that tells a story of Indigenous people in English is,

and will always be problematic in terms of authenticity and communication. Joseph DeVito

makes the distinction between high-context and low-context cultures which is based especially on

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the amount of shared knowledge and information. While a member of a high-context culture

relies on information shared, for example, through previous communications, assumptions or

knowledge of others and uses a minimum or no words, a low-context member will explicitly state

most information verbally (DeVito 44 - 50). Drawing on the analysis of the five Indigenous

stories and available information on the Inuit’s way of communication, they represent an example

of a high-context culture. This means that understanding messages communicated Disney way is

most likely going to be difficult to a member of a high-context culture. As De Vito points out, it

may even “prove insulting, insensitive or unnecessary” (DeVito 47).

Considering language, Brother Bear does not even try to pretend to employ or imitate the

aboriginal style. Rather, as Trinh-T. Min-ha maintains: “it grasps the native’s point of view and

realizes his vision of his world” (Min-ha in Kaplan 197). The immediate feeling one gets when

watching the opening scene of Brother Bear is that of watching three American boys in Inuit

clothes riding their kayaks. Let me demonstrate the means of expression used in Brother Bear.

The following dialogue takes place in one of the opening scenes:

[A ….of caribou running in the boys' direction]

Kenai: Get down, get down!

Sitka: Kenai!

Kenai: Never try to milk a caribou.

[They fight]

Sitka: [Prepares to spit on Kenai]

Kenai: No, no. Don’t, don’t.

Denahi: Hey, will you two knock it off?

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Kenai: That’s all right Sitka. After today, he won’t treat me like that anymore.

Sitka: Oh, right…the big manhood ceremony.

Sitka: There he [Kenai] is. Ha ha! Come here, loverboy.

Kenai: Uhh. Leave me alone!

(Brother Bear 02.01)

[After receiving his totem]:

Sitka: Aw, Kenai, wait. I’m sorry.

Kenai: What?

Sitka: Your totem… I think it’s really great.

Kenai: You do?

Sitka: And I made you something.

Kenai: Really?

[giving him flowers]

Sitka: Now when you skip around loving everybody…you’ll smell so sweet.

Denahi: Isn’t it nice, instead of fighting you’re giving each other flowers.

Sitka: He’s so in touch with his totem already.

Kenai: Hey, dog breath, go take care of the fish.

Sitka: Sure. Kenai loves me, he loves me not…

(Brother Bear 08.55)

As obvious, there is no room for silence. Words are approached directly without

hesitation. Utterances are explicit as opposed to Indigenous stories where there are always hidden

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messages and words unspoken or carefully chosen. A remarkable demonstration of Inuit

communication on screen can be seen in a film by Zacharias Kunuk, Atanarjuat: The Fast

Runner. It retells an old Inuit legend and is acted in Inuktit by Inuit actors (Atanarjuat: The Fast

Runner). The difference in the main characters' interaction when compared with the Western

style, is immense. While Indigenous people leave spiritual topics, sacred objects or dangerous

animals out, the boys in Brother Bear boldly discuss the sacred ceremony while fooling around.

Kenai even tries to trade his totem, the Bear of Love, it not being what he expected. The way

people (and animals) communicate in Indigenous stories is less explicit.

“Northern peoples employ circumlocution when discussing beings or activities that

embody spiritual power or luck in the hunt. A bear, for example, is too powerful to

mention directly, so he might be referred to as ‘that big brown one’. The indirect reference

shows polite deference and avoids alarming a potential quarry. ”

(Tyler and Brooks in Oman X)

I consider the following scene from The Epic of Qayak to be an excellent example of

high-context communication. For instance, when Qayak comes to the village of his future father

in law, Umialik, he does not go directly to his house. Rather he visits an old couple and waits for

Umialik to send for him. When he enters the house, he makes some observation but no words are

spoken. His future wife only gives him “a brief smile” (21) and goes on sewing. What is said is

said only in Qayak’s mind. Although Umialik must see him because “his feet [are] against the

wall, he lay facing the door” (22), he does not say a word and Qayak wonders: “Isn’t he going to

say something to me?” (22). Not even after a few months in Umialik’s house is Qayak addressed

directly: “Maybe tomorrow he will address me directly” (22) he says in winter. When Umialik

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finally speaks to him, the other boys notice this and “with not a single word they leave” (23).

There is a lot of noticing and observing in the aboriginal writings and very little noticing and

observing in Brother Bear. In fact, very little information in the film passes, either to the audience

or to the viewer, without words. People and animals are either engaged in dialogues or music

accompanied by lyrics is playing. The following quote illustrates well the communication that

takes place in The Epic of Qayak.

“Sometimes people communicate without words. They communicate with their eyes or

with actions. There are three good examples of speaking only in the epic [of Qayak]..:

“they understood this and returned her love, showing it in obedience and in their shining

eyes, never, never, in words.” (Tyler and Brooks in Oman XVIII)

Main characters in Inuit or Native American folktales are never as chatty as Koda, Kenai’s little

companion in bear form, or Rutt and Tuke, the two moose brothers. Further, an Indigenous

character would probably never use as much irony as the characters in Brother Bear.

Rutt: Yeah. Hey, my name’s Rutt. This is my brother Tuke.

Tuke: How’s it going, bear?

Kenai (bear): Don’t call me that.

Rutt: Sorry, uh, uh, Mr. Bear?

Kenai (bear): I am not a bear. I hate bears.

Tuke: Well, gee, eh? You’re one big beaver. No kiddin‘, eh?

…

Tuke: We understand, we’re not moose, either. We’re like, uh…we’re like squirrels. Yeah.

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(Brother Bear 27.50)

Irony is something that cannot be found in any of the Indigenous stories I analyzed for the

purpose of this thesis. Although I understand the filmmakers’ intention to include humor and

make the film funny and attractive for a wide audience it is in stark contrast to the true

Indigenous way. The same applies to simile and metaphors: “…figurative devices such as

metaphors and similes are rare in Indigenous Alaskan stories” (Chadonnet in Oman VIII).

Similarly, informal expressions such as “no kidding”, “knock it off” or “how is it going”

can hardly be considered to be a part of Inuit storytelling. As Steven Holden in his review points

out “…a semi-Arctic pre-Columbian paradise where all members of the animal kingdom except

humans speak the same language. But that language often has a jarring contemporary ring. Who

knew that 10,000 years ago the word dude was as ubiquitous as it is today?” (Holden)

To compare the language of Kenai and his brothers with language of the main characters

in Indigenous tales, one observes the Inuit characters created by Disney are not only extremely

talkative but also emotional. Inuit characters in Indigenous tales, on the other hand, are careful

with words and rarely express their feelings, likes or dislikes, through them. With respect to

expressing emotions among contemporary Inuit, there is an apt description of how they display

their emotions in a document introducing modern Inuit culture: “Inuit often express their

emotions very subtly, in the tone of voice or the lifting of eyebrows…Inuit are adept at picking

up the slight intonations and facial expressions from each other that reflect emotional states”

(Inuit Way 44).

4. 5. Spirituality

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Is the world of Inuit spirituality presented to us in Brother Bear in an authentic way or is

it, perhaps, presented as more spiritual and natural? In the very beginning of the film, a strong

focus on Indigenity and spirituality is by the font of subtitles, music and the Indigenous voice

speaking in the background in what is most probably the Inuktitut language. By emphasising

spirituality and vast empty spaces, the North, as Hulan suggests, is being presented as a place “in

which the individual fulfils a quest for self-knowledge or self-wisdom through the contact with

aboriginal people” (Hulan 60). Although there is no contact, Disney’s presentation of the North

as a place of challenge and great adventure fosters such imagination. Considering the genre, there

is probably nothing wrong with the world being full of magic (Brother Bear 01.02). A shaman

woman appears in the opening scene and the narrator explains that “The lights are the spirits of

our ancestors and that they have the power to make changes in our world” (01.22) and “one thing

always changes to another” (Brother Bear 01.40). With respect to what has been said above about

Inuit spirituality, it basically captures well the Inuit belief that every living being has a soul. Also

the fact the shaman is a woman corresponds to common Inuit practices, according to Christina

Pratt.

What is, however, in stark contrast with the Inuit way and has already been discussed, is

the idea of transformation. Transformation, in all Inuit and Native American tales, happens very

naturally. What is regarded as natural by any Inuit character, seems to be a deep source of trouble

to the main character in Brother Bear who does not even know he was turned into a bear.

Similarly like the Ugly Duckling, Kenai finds out about his change by seeing his mirror reflection

in the river, his shock being immense. Furthermore, by throwing his totem animal away, Kenai’s

authenticity as an Inuit boy is seriously shaken.

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To say Disney portrayal of Inuit spirituality is fake would be too strict. The film includes

some important elements of Inuit beliefs such as transformation, totem animals, spirits and

travelling of souls. I believe, the animators succeeded in presenting the basic animist belief about

the ever changing world. At the point when Kenai is being turned into a bear, the idea of

transformation is obvious (Brother Bear 19.53). I would rather say, the portrayal is shallow. It is

obvious the story writers desperately needed a story worth telling, a story of bears. Everything

else, spirituality including, is just a prop and is missing its true nature.

4. 6. Animation

As has been briefly discussed above, the idea for a new film was inspired by the grand

setting of the American West and the Rocky Mountains and “romantic images of America’s

wilderness: the Hudson River School of painting” (Wakabayashi 16). The idea of a great

mountainous landscape was followed by the idea of a bear as the main character. Nature and

animals were the main focus of the creators of the film since its very beginning (Wakabayashi

18). Watching the film, it is obvious the creators wanted to stay authentic and involve the

audience as much as possible. It was really important for them to seek authenticity and show

bears as they really are and not as if they were “humanized” (54). There is a strong desire to

“adhere to the exact behavioral traits of bears” (54).

Emotions are at the center of the animators’ attention. The images of a natural

environment and dramatic landscape are supposed to make you “feel like you’re outside and

experiencing the landscape” (55). Wakabayashi describes first discussions about the plot of the

story as follows: “…we like to be moved in some way. We like movies that take you some place

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emotionally and that either make you laugh or cry or feel life as deeply as you can…For the

makers of Brother Bear, this appeal to a core emotion would be the film’s single most important

guiding force” (39, 40). I am not sure if this is the case for an Indigenous audience. Do they like

to be moved as well? And what is it they find moving?

Putting different types of locations together makes it obvious that authenticity was not

among the main Disney’s goals. What makes one wonder, however, is the enormous emphasis put

on an authentic depiction of a natural environment, landscape and animals in comparison with the

complete lack of ambition in portraying Indigenous people. This is also obvious from the visual

development of Kenai who underwent a considerable change in the process of creation (see fig. 1

and 2).

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Figure 1: “Character Development art by Harald Siepermann”. Scanned from Wakabayashi, Clark

H. Brother Bear: A Transformation Tale. 2003. Print.

Figure 2: “Animation art of Kenai by Jim Jackson”. Scanned from Wakabayashi, Clark H.

Brother Bear: A Transformation Tale. 2003. Print.

4. 7. Music

Music and songs, composed by Phil Collins and Mark Mancina and performed by Phil

Collins, Tina Turner and various other artists, accompany the film in a mainstream pop or pop

rock fashion that does not offend anybody. The songs are professionally written and the lyrics

help to get across the message of love, brotherhood and forgiveness. At the point of Kenai’s

transformation into a bear, The Bulgaria Women’s Choir sing a song composed by Phil Collins in,

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presumably, a Native American Inuit language and create what could be called “Native

atmosphere”. The soundtrack version includes only the English version of the song.

The songs offer an interesting mix of instruments: “The instrumentation runs the gamut

from Japanese Taiko drums to those from Native American cultures, as well as Hopi instruments

and woodwinds made from drilled animal bones – all together with Western instruments” (Pinsky

224). It is needless to say that the type of music Brother Bear features has nothing in common

with the way the Inuit perform their songs. In order to be able to compare the western with Inuit

style, here is Henry Rink's description of Inuit singing performances:

“…the words themselves being rather trifling, the sentences abrupt, and the author

evidently presuming the audience to be familiar with the whole subject or gist of the song,

and able to guess the greater part of it. Every strophe makes such an abrupt sentence, or

consists of single and even abbreviated words, followed by some interjectional words only

used for songs and without any particular signification. The gesticulations and

declamation, accompanied by the drum, are said to have been very expressive, while the

melody itself was rather monotonous and dull.” (Rink 66)

Inuit singing and drum beating serve a different purpose. According to Ann Rooth, songs

are very important to the Athabascan Indians and the Eskimos (Root 91). There seem to be two

different kinds: private and secret or known by all or most members of the village. They have a

magical power and can be used for “weather magic” to give hunters good weather (91). Another

reason for using songs was to solve conflicts. When there was a problem between two men, they

secretly composed a song to ridicule their opponent. The songs were performed at a camp

gathering and the wives of the men would take turns in singing their songs while the men were

beating a drum and dancing in the middle of the igloo (The Inuit way 18).

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Obviously, Disney is miles away from the distinctive way Inuit perform their traditional

drum dancing and singing. The only feeble attempt made in order to sound more “Native” is the

Transformation song which is sung by the Bulgaria Women’s Choir in, what is presumably, one

of the variants of the Inuit language (Pinsky 224). The songs, like the language and animation,

serve the main purpose of the film: to arouse people's emotions. Although the music may appeal

to a Western ear, it can hardly be considered authentic in terms of Inuit culture.

4. 8. Conclusion

A half truth is often a whole lie.

(proverb)

In April 2015, approximately a dozen Native actors left the set of a new Hollywood

comedy by Adam Sandler because they felt insulted by the misrepresentation of Apache culture.

The members of the Navajo nation felt offended “by the stereotypes portrayed and the outright

disrespect” (Shilling) paid to them. Even though, cartoon characters cannot walk off the set, the

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effect on members of the culture they represent can be similarly harmful. The central focus of this

chapter was to reconsider Disney's claims of communicating cross-cultural messages, teaching

tolerance through an encounter with varied human ethnicities and promoting diversity.

Understanding cultural differences and reinforcing cultural stereotypes are two sides of the same

coin. We can understand differences and enjoy each other’s uniqueness only if we are presented

true images, otherwise what we get is a distorted picture of the Other, leaving aside that, even

with the best of intentions, “the Other” might get hurt.

The aim was to examine Brother Bear in terms of authenticity and the cultural message it

passes on to its audience. I wanted to see if the film confirms the claim of the Walt Disney

Company of promoting multiculturalism through understanding differences.

In order to be able to assess whether Disney's depiction of Indigenous culture is accurate,

I needed to explore various aspects of Inuit life. In this respect, I found very useful a document

created to introduce and promote Inuit culture, The Inuit Way, and also Ann Rooth's accounts of

her expedition to Alaska in 1966. The Northern Experience by Renée Hulan proved to be very

helpful in terms of putting forth common stereotypes associated with the North.

The filmmakers inspired by the grand setting of the American West decided to make a

new film featuring a bear as the main protagonist. Inspired by Inuit and Native American legends

they created a story about an Inuit tribe that takes place in the distant past somewhere in the

Pacific Northwest. What I suggest is that the filmmakers did not succeed in their interpretation of

the North. In fact, they did not put much effort in providing an authentic portrayal of distinctive

features of Inuit culture. To avoid some painful or problematic issues, the film creators set the

story about an Indigenous boy in an unspecified time and place. Considering the number of

ambiguities, it seems to be the filmmakers' intention not to present a specific culture. Unlike with

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bears, whose physiognomy and behavioral traits are depicted with admirable precision, the

elements of Inuit culture and the Inuit's beliefs and values seem to be portrayed more or less

superficially. In fact, it is not the Inuit that the audience is presented with but their fake image

based on common cultural stereotypes. They are romanticized in terms of spirituality and through

settings. The filmmakers follow a common concept of the Inuit as a people who belong to the

past, by which they suggest their identity is somewhat static. The true nature of Indigenous

culture in Brother Bear is slightly distorted in areas such as language, narrative and spirituality

with the depiction maintaining a Western point of view.

The filmmakers' goal to arouse emotions was achieved through outstanding animation and

sweet music as opposed to the simplicity of Inuit tales. The film features a broad and thrilling

view of the natural environment and it is easy for the audience to imagine that they are outside,

experiencing the landscape. The mainstream music and lyrics are rather catchy, but they are not

reminiscent of Inuit drum dancing and singing either. The means of expression Indigenous people

use in their stories are in stark contrast with the way they are used in Brother Bear. Indigenous

elements in the film form the background for a story that could otherwise happen elsewhere were

it not for the filmmakers' fondness for the vast spaces of the Pacific Northwest.

Given that Inuit culture can be considered to be a high-context one, it suggests not only a

different type of communication and values but probably a slightly different story. I believe the

film does not succeed in communicating traditional Inuit values: teamwork, cooperation and self-

reliance. Instead, it more or less provides a mixture of Indigenous elements like transformation,

bears, shamans, coming-of-age, totem animals, drums or spirituality, that appear to be conceived

from a Western perspective.

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My point is that a folktale cannot fail to present any particular culture, since it is tied to a

certain place and people who speak a certain language. However, a fairytale can do that because

it is not, like a folktale, tied to a particular place. Instead, it happens in an unreal world with

unreal characters. With the Disney Company's choice of making a new film featuring Indigenous

characters, the filmmakers could not avoid the difficulty of portraying a different culture in a

post-colonial time.They either honestly wanted to bring different cultures closer to the large

audience or, more or less consciously ignored the true nature of the Inuit and picked what they

found most convenient for the film. Would it not be more honest if the film's creators had

abandoned the plan to present Indigenous people and decided to make a fairytale instead? For

now the message Brother Bear communicates ranges somewhere between cross-cultural and

confusing.

As Mark Pinsky suggests, “...children and their parents, clearly received and understood

Brother Bear's messages – love, forgiveness, brotherhood – from a culture far different from their

own” (225). He thinks it was Walt Disney's dream, to communicate lessons to children across

cultures. However, that raises the question as to what kind of lesson is communicated to what

kind of children? What the Western audience receives is a distorted picture of the Inuit, and

similarly, the Inuit are confronted with artificial images of themselves. Understanding becomes

misunderstanding.

Whether the film's creators' intention was reduced to making the film more attractive and exotic

or they just wanted to present a different culture, I think they barely scratched the surface. I

believe it was unnecessary and it boomeranged in the form of a weak story line. Had they not

been so shallow, picking pieces of different Indigenous cultures that suited their purpose, the

story could have been stronger and more authentic.

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Although the filmmakers did not succeed in an authentic presentation of a different

culture, I believe they managed to convey a message about understanding and accepting

difference. Even though the transformation element does not serve the same purpose in Brother

Bear as in the Indigenous tales, it serves well the purpose of seeing the world from a different

perspective. Had the filmmakers gone a bit deeper beneath the surface of visual art, the effect

would have been more noticeable. I suggest the Walt Disney Company take a step further and

show interest in getting to know a different culture. This way they can get across a message about

cross-cultural understanding more effectively without offending anyone.

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Resumé (České)

Práce se zabývá čtyřicátým čtvrtým animovaným filmem z produkce studia Walta Disney

Medvědí bratři. Film se odehrává v pravěku na severo-západním pobřeží Tichého oceánu a vypráví

příběh Inuitského kmene a chlapce, který se promění z člověka na medvěda a vydá se na cestu

sebepoznání. Tvůrci filmu, inspirovaní Inuitskými a domorodými legendami o medvědech vytvořili

příběh zasazený do prostředí původních obyvatel Severní Ameriky, ve kterém představují řadu prvků

Inuitské kultury, jako jsou například transformace, duchové zvířat, totemy a cestování duší. První část

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práce se zabývá příběhy Inuitů a původních obyvatel Severní Ameriky. Hlavní motivy –

transformace, pomsta, bratrská láska, dospívání a role medvěda - jsou podrobeny analýze, aby bylo

možné posoudit, nakolik film odráží podstatu zvolených pěti příběhů původních obyvatel. Na této

analýze staví druhá část práce. Druhá část práce se zabývá reprezentací Inuitské kultury ve filmu

Medvědí bratři. Kriticky zkoumá tvrzení společnosti Walta Disneye o předávání multikulturního

poselství, a zkoumá film z pohledu autenticity vyobrazení Inuitů, která se publiku nabízí.

Přizpůsobení původní kultury západním hodnotám ve filmu je zkoumáno v několika oblastech. Těmi

jsou – jazyk, hudba, animace, vyprávění příběhů a spiritualita. Ze závěru vyplývá, že i když se motivy

obsažené v původních příbězích na určitých místech s filmem setkávají, z převážné části jsou

přizpůsobeny západnímu stylu. Přesto, že se filmovým tvůrcům Medvědích bratrů nepodařilo

vystihnout podstatu původní kultury, dokázali publiku předat poselství tolerance a chápání rozdílů.

Resumé (English)

The thesis deals with Disney’s forty-fourth full-length animated feature Brother Bear. The

film is set in the Pacific Northwest in the prehistoric past and tells a transformation tale about an

Inuit tribe and an Inuit boy who turns into a bear and sets out on a journey of discovery. The

film’s creators, inspired by Inuit and Native American bear legends, created a story set in Native

American environment featuring a number of Inuit elements such as transformation, animal

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spirits, totem animals or travelling of souls. The first part deals with Inuit and Native American

stories. In order to see how Brother Bear reflects the nature of Inuit and Native American

folktales, the central motifs, such as coming-of-age, transformation, brotherhood, revenge and

representation of the bear, are examined in five Indigenous tales. The motifs are compared with

the film’s story with the central focus on the main hero in a coming-of-age process. The analysis

provides a good starting point for a further elaboration of the subject. The second part deals with

Inuit representations in Brother Bear. The Disney’s claims of communicating cross-cultural

messages are reconsidered and critically examined. The film is examined from the perspective of

authenticity and cross-cultural messages it passes on to its audience. Appropriation and imposing

Western values on Indigenous people in Brother Bear are examined in several areas. They

include language, story-telling, animation, music and spirituality. These are explored to see

whether they reflect Inuit nature or maintain a Western concept. The meaning and message of the

motifs in Brother Bear appear to be slightly shifted in comparison with Indigenous tales.

Although they meet at some point, the underlying concepts are in most cases different. Even

though, the filmmakers did not succeed in an authentic presentation of the North and a different

culture, they managed to convey the message about understanding and accepting difference.

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