Throughout the course of ENGL 470, an important theme that has consistently come up is the versatility and fluidity of what constitutes “storytelling”.  Who is telling the story, why are they telling it and which stories we are choosing to listen to.  For our conference, we wanted to look at one of the most modern forms of “storytelling” and literature that has come to dominate the 21st century: mass media.  Over the past few years, the surge in new technological innovations has completely evolved and transformed all of our experiences in Canadian society.  With this increase of technology, the presence of mass media, television, and movies has drastically increased in the lives of students from even the earliest stages of our education systems.  Consequently, the landscape of literature has been inevitably affected and must adapt in order to survive.  We believe that these new forms of mass media, television and movies have come to represent a form of literature and storytelling in and of themselves, through their role in the influence and education of the next generations.  Therefore, to be serious about impacting the future of Canadian literature means to be concerned with the content depicted on television shows as well as the big screen.  Through a criticism and breakdown of all media forms, our intervention strategy will attempt to integrate Aboriginal culture into mainstream television, education, literature, and movies and work on shedding the dichotomy that otherwise divides us.  By approaching our “literature” intervention with a focus on mass media in popular culture, we believe we can work towards recreating the narratives of our nation.

Television, film, and other entertainment media are also legitimate and very relevant grounds for intervention. Because screen entertainment is widely available and voraciously consumed by many young people today, the stories and narratives in media have tremendous influence on how people think, perceive, and understand—societal issues included. One of our concerns was the inadequate and inauthentic portrayal of First Nations culture in pop culture. This was also a theme explored in Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water, one of our course readings. Canada has taken initiative to remedy this issue of Aboriginal representation in media, particularly with the Aboriginal People’s Television Network (APTN), but we feel it is now time to take a further step. Such as integrating Aboriginal media culture with mainstream Canadian media culture and ending the “media apartheid” approach. Or encouraging (and erecting programs for) young Aboriginal artists to be producers, directors, and creators—real movers in Canadian media.

In addition to our group subject matter geared towards the media representations of First Nations people in our society, we also focus on the concept of how education has shaped the masses’ ideologies through forms of media, like pop-culture, children’s cartoons, and movies. Certain ideologies that have been embedded in the psyche of previous, and current generations stem from media exposure, and how school curriculums have been designed.

For instance, massive film and children’s media productions such as Pocahontas, Peter Pan, Jungle 2 Jungle, Charlie Brown’s “Thanks Giving”, Indian in the Cupboard, and Bugs Bunny’s “Horse hare Dolly Bird”, are among many influential forms of media that have created a stereotype of First Nation’s people; they are depicted as wild, barbaric, and often times seen as antagonists.

Additionally, First Nations peoples in these productions are portrayed in traditional regalia, with bow and arrows and speaking foreign tongue. This is a misrepresentation of how modern First Nation’s people live their lives, and creates a false ideology in the psyche of the masses of our society who are being influenced by these media production, particularly children. These misleading concepts tell stories to our society. With a lack of education about how matters are actually occurring in our society, our North American culture has created a false representation of First Nations people, as this collage video of popular cartoons shows.

We are interested in shedding light upon how education, through the introduction of media, can change current ideologies, and form realistic representations for future generations to come. The media is extremely influential, and our society’s ideologies towards First Nations people can change drastically if media tactics change. Our intervention focuses on the idea of designing and creating a new way of presenting media to the masses. Telling stories through pop culture, children’s cartoons, and movies, that are not cliche and do not possess stereotypes, would educate and navigate minds to see new perspectives. Perhaps in the near future, our nation could use media within school curriculums to tell new stories that give an actual representation of current affairs with Indigenous peoples of Canada.

Our team’s goal is to find a way to increase media representation of Aboriginals in popular culture, and to have this effect positively influence education of young people.

Intervention ideas

Here’s a rough cut of our intervention ideas so far:

• Increase funding for young minority artists
• Create a well done education-based series that portrays the oral stories of Aboriginal culture in a video that can be shown in classes, elementary, middle, high schools
• Have more educated, appropriate people involved in the higher level production and creation of First Nations media, not just “old white men”
• Encourage more First Nations youngsters into media and literature and educating all youngsters in the relevance of First Nations media and  literature that will happen in the future
• De-segregate First Nations media from mainstream media
• Setting up a production company or a publisher or a channel that’s not Aboriginal-focussed (to avoid segregation) but has a special mandate to look for minority reps in canada
• Incentive for big companies and publishers to push for this kind of representation
• Entertainment is an industry about money, and there’s a belief that minority rep doesn’t bring in money—however, is this really true?
• Encourage both the literary and entertainment industries to have a more diverse cast of characters (and cast that play said characters) but avoid the tokenization of these characters
• Creation of an equivalent of the Bechdel test for First Nations representation in media and movies—to get people thinking

Works cited

APTN. Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, n.d. Web. 24 July 2015.

Bechdel Test Movie List. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 July 2015.

Rygreen100. “Native Americans Through the Eyes of My Children.m4v.” YouTube. YouTube, 5 Feb. 2010. Web. 21 July 2015.

Works consulted

A conference from last year with an emphasis on education:

Kallu, Shamina, Devon Smith, Christie Smith, and Charlotte Hodgson. “ENGL 470A: CONFERENCE WEBSITE.” ENGL 470A CONFERENCE WEBSITE. University of British Columbia Department of English, n.d. Web. 24 July 2015.