Southern-generated media arrives in remote communities

Jennifer David, a member of Chapleau Cree First Nation in northern Ontario, was the former Director of Communications at the Aboriginal Peoples’ Television Network. She has written a history of the network called “Original People, Original Television”. In that book, she describes the clip from the Caribou Hunters:

“Yes, Cree hunters did hunt, trap and skin animals. Yes, they did trade at the Hudson’s Bay coast. But the omniscient narrator is describing the Cree in tones a biologist might use to introduce the inhabitants of a particularly fascinating Petri dish. The ‘Indians’ are unmistakably ‘Others’. They are exotics, creatures to be observed, even admired, by the audience and narrator; but they are not given voice, they do not tell their own story. This is a story about ‘them’, told by one of ‘us’, for an audience of ‘us’.” (David, p.9).

Mainstream media content was also created in southern cities and sent to rural and remote communities. In the late 1960s, CBC filmed shows like cartoons, old hockey games, national news, and soap operas in the south and sent the tapes up North. Ten years later, satellite technologies broadcast more and more content into remote communities. This one-way transmission process became seen by some Indigenous people as a negative impact on their languages, institutions, and cultural practices. David describes how this flood of information and imagery looked to northern residents:

“The tidal wave of southern programming was both shocking and addictive. Designed to grab and hold urban viewers long-conditioned to television, the pace and violence of TV was almost surreal to Inuit audiences, a tsunami of images of Vietnam, urban crime, the Holocaust and people doing incomprehensible things in a foreign language – English” (David, p.14).

These shows reflected a very different reality than that of the people living in northern and remote regions. As a result, people in some villages, like Igloolik in Nunavut, voted against the introduction of satellite television until more Inuktitut-language programming became available.

As society became aware of these challenges, well-meaning parties sought to incorporate more Indigenous peoples in mainstream media. However, the urban-based organizations that needed to attract audiences and advertisers based in the south often failed to produce content that reflected the unique and diverse contexts of Indigenous experiences and knowledges – not to mention their languages.

The video below is a panel discussion on indigenous representations in the media. Jennifer David is one of the panelists. The event was part of the Media Democracy Conference held at the University of Ottawa in November 2012.