Film director James Cameron says he feels he was “ambushed” this week during a visit to Argentina in which he believes there was an attempt to use his image as an environmentalist to put a positive spin on lithium mining operations despite indigenous opposition.
Cameron, the director of “Avatar” and “Titanic,” said Friday that he would now dedicate attention and money from his Avatar Alliance Foundation to supporting indigenous communities opposed to lithium operations in South America.
“Ironically, the upshot of this is that I am now aware of the problem and now we will help through my foundation with the issue of indigenous rights with respect to lithium mining,” Cameron told a group of journalists gathered in his bedroom at hotel in the capital of Buenos Aires on Friday night.
Cameron came to Argentina this week to speak at a sustainability conference in Buenos Aires on Friday.
“I thought he was coming here to do some kind of pep talk about environmental causes,” Cameron said.
As part of the visit, Cameron traveled to northern Jujuy province on Thursday to visit a large solar power plant with Governor Gerardo Morales and says he was never told lithium would be part of the discussion.
After Cameron’s visit, Morales wrote a message on social media thanking Cameron for the visit, writing that the province was seeking to “transform the energy matrix” through projects like the solar power plant and “lithium extraction.” .
The director received a letter that a group of 33 indigenous communities in the area had written to him a few days earlier asking him to either cancel his trip or meet with them so they could explain their longstanding opposition to the lithium mining projects they claim to affect. . their land rights and negatively impact the environment.
“I feel like I am ambushed,” Cameron told reporters after meeting with local environmentalists, saying he was unaware of the controversy surrounding the lithium projects. “I feel like I was put into an optic that had a meaning that I wasn’t aware of.”
Although Cameron says he “doesn’t know the exact architecture” of how the “ambush” happened, he feels there was an effort to use his image not only for his support of environmental causes, but also for the overall message of “Avatar.” .”
“’Avatar’ is the highest grossing film in history. It is about the conflict between an extractive industry and the rights of indigenous peoples,” Cameron said. “If you could generate an optic where it looks like I’m endorsing lithium mining, then you have some kind of mandate or endorsement of some kind.”
In their letter to Cameron, representatives of indigenous communities made a direct reference to “Avatar” to ask for the director’s support.
“Jujuy is Pandora, and is under threat from the greed of the mining industry, and we are the Na’vi,” the letter says, referring to the fictional world where “Avatar” takes place and its inhabitants who fight against the colonizers. miners
Before leaving Argentina, Cameron met with Verónica Chávez, the representative of one of the indigenous communities of Jujuy.
Argentina is the fourth largest producer of lithium and is part of what is known as the “lithium triangle”, an area that contains a large part of the world’s proven reserves of the metal and also includes neighboring Chile and Bolivia. . Demand for lithium is skyrocketing amid the transition to renewable energy around the world and the growth of electric vehicles powered by lithium batteries.
