Something to remember is... the Na'vi are not people... they are aliens on a distant moon. The actors actually went through training to learn how to walk and move not like a human in the film. The Na'vi barely understand where the "sky people" come from when the film starts. They are represented more as aliens than people. But they are also creatures that respect and love the land. They use everything they have. They convert leaves into bowls, plants into tools, and why not use leftover machines to their advantage as well? These aliens do not have the same hangups that humans have (they have different ones unique to them.) They have respect for the land, and these relics from the old battle are now part of the land. Look at the downed helicopter covered in vines and moss. It's now beautiful and looks just as part of the landscape as any of the rocks or plants around it.
Now, having said all that, Pongu Pongu is actually run by a human. According to the land's backstory, he took an expedition from ACE years ago and loved it so much he came back, never left, and opened a tiki bar. This of course is a human that had no first hand account of the battle between humans and Na'vi. He just fell in love with the land and the culture and decided he wanted to stay, and now he makes his living selling refreshments to new visitors. So, it's not about the locals opening up a food window and appropriating the leftover military hardware, it's about a human doing that. He enjoys the Na'vi culture so he dresses the mech suit in Na'vi braids. He makes arts and crafts and builds the animals he sees on Pandora out of leftover junk that he finds in the old munitions bunker. He's a weird guy.
But more importantly, he's also fictional.
Below is Joe Rohde's explanation of tiki bars and narrative placemaking in a theme park land from
Instagram. He grew up in Hawaii:
Narrative placemaking is not a "push" form of storytelling. You are not forced to look in any particular direction, pay attention to any particular character, or place yourself in any particular place. Instead you are free to look at anything you please, and think whatever you choose to think about it. However, whatever is there to be seen should be filled with meaningful detail, so that if you do look, and you do think about what you see, there is story, emotion, and philosophy to be absorbed. Not very different than the real world. The tiny Pongu-Pongu tiki-style walk-up bar on Pandora is such a place. Because I grew up in Hawaii, I remember tiki bars that were not retro… they were sincere. They were made by vets who had returned from World War II in the South Pacific, which ended only 10 years before I was born. The idea of people returning to peace, of taking the trash of conflict and up-cycling it into something that will be used for celebration, friendship, and fun is poignant and meaningful. The idea of the power of a creative soul to recover beauty out of destruction is important. Or. It's a great place for a tasty colorful drink. And that is true too. Only depends on how closely you look.