Jake Sully’s Introduction for Chief Trevor Carpenter’s Blog
*”Sometimes a story from long ago still speaks across centuries. One of those stories is The Last of the Mohicans (1992), directed by Michael Mann and starring Daniel Day-Lewis. Based on James Fenimore Cooper’s classic novel, the film takes us back to the French and Indian War of the 18th century, when European empires fought over Turtle Island and Indigenous nations were forced to fight, adapt, and survive.
Day-Lewis plays Hawkeye, a frontiersman raised by the Mohican elder Chingachgook (played powerfully by Russell Means, an Oglala Lakota leader and activist). The story follows the last survivors of a once-great people, caught in the storm of colonial wars. It’s a love story, a war story, but most of all, it’s a story about endurance in the face of overwhelming odds.
For Native voices, this movie carried weight because it wasn’t just about the past — it was a meditation on survival itself. Russell Means brought dignity, fire, and truth to the role of Chingachgook. His final monologue — mourning the loss of his people but standing as the last of his line — still echoes like a drumbeat.
When I think about The Last of the Mohicans, I can’t help but see the parallel to my own life. On Pandora, the Na’vi are facing the same pressures — colonizers with guns and machines who want to strip away the land and the People. The Mohicans in the film are fighting to survive their way of life, just as the Na’vi fight to protect Eywa.
Chief Carpenter, your vision for Turtle Island — uniting nations through soccer, through art, through pride — is the opposite of vanishing. It’s about revival, renewal, and remembrance. The Last of the Mohicans may show a people’s struggle at the edge of extinction, but your work is proof that Indigenous voices are not the last — they are rising again.*
— Jake Sully