Matoaka was kidnapped at 16, gang-raped, and traded for a copper pot—her real story is nothing like the Disney version.
As heard by us
A Disney-shaped legend gives way to a real person, a grave in Gravesend, and the harder truth underneath.
This piece pulls Pocahontas out of the Disney-shaped fairy tale and into a messier world of politics, money, and control. It keeps worrying at the distance between the myth and the record, then ends in Gravesend, where the statue and the grave make the tidy version hard to keep…
Why you'd press play
Press play to hear the Pocahontas story stripped of the fairy tale gloss.
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