Indigenous peoples have always been involved in the production and distribution of media content. Their efforts are reflected in contemporary print, broadcast, and digital media.
But alongside these activities, much mainstream media continues to misrepresent Indigenous peoples. Critical communication scholars show how despite their diversity, mainstream media representations of Indigenous peoples reflect similar negative characteristics that persist over time. These representations include stereotypes of bloodthirsty or noble savages, shifty half-breeds, stoic warriors, and Indian princesses. One example is controversy over the 2013 film The Lone Ranger. There are many other examples, such as ADD UPDATED EXAMPLES.
Representing the rich cultural diversity of First Nations identities as being Pan-Indigenous may not immediately strike non-Indigenous audiences as being overtly negative but it is another damaging contributor to misunderstanding. EXPAND AND ADD EXAMPLE.
RESOURCE: Reporting in Indigenous Communities – UBC School of Journalism
The widespread production and dissemination of these images and representations was amplified through the emergence of mass media. In Canada, by the 1860s and 1870s, Indigenous people came to be represented as dying cultures. Their rich visual arts, crafts, songs, performances, words, and stories – were collected and circulated in mainstream society as popular evidence of ‘primitive’ artifacts and practices”.