The Whale Rider

In response to your questions, instead of posting this as a comment I am going to post it as a Blog because you addressed many of the issues that I was going to address as well.

The young girl did a wonderful job acting, but I believe the presence of the superiority issue was not only addressed with her as a young child but with all women in the community. In the beginning of the movie the women were addressed to go to the kitchen and cook the food. Later, when the school was going to “open”, all of the women were in the kitchen while the men were outside and the Chief was ordering his wife around knowing that the other women would follow her lead. Most of the discrimination came from her grandfather, and not the others in the community. The boys who were her age did not demand that she sat behind them, one of them even taught her fighting moves. Her uncle helped her learn fighting moves while his friends encouraged them, if I remember correctly, the grandmother told her granddaughter that the uncle used to be wonderful at the sport and encouraged her to ask him to teach her. It was a direct discrimination between grandfather and granddaughter. For, she was the twin who lived, the one who broke the rope of chiefs in their family threads. The grandfather viewed her as a curse, she was not male therefore she could not be chief.