Tag Archives: radio

ImagineNATIVE

http://www.imaginenative.org/

ImagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival is an international festival that celebrates the latest works by indigenous peoples on the forefront of innovation in film, video, radio, and new media. Each year in the fall, the festival presents some of the most compelling and distinctive Indigenous works from around the world. The festival attracts and connects film makers, media artisists, and other industry professionals. The works accept reflect the diversity of the worlds Indigenous nations.

ImagineNATIVE is committed to dispelling stereotypical notions of Indigenous peoples through diverse media presentations from within our communities, thereby contributing to a greater understanding by audiences of Indigenous artistic expression. A youth workshop is offered for Aboriginal youth to learn the basics of machine cinema. There are many other activities that youth can be involved in such as the ImagineNATIVE Youth Video Contest.

This website is interesting for those who would like to learn more about Indigenous film and art. There is an extensive archive that contains many videos and images from past events and festivals.

Native America Calling

Native America Calling (NAC) is a radio talk-show connecting traditional and internet radio stations and listeners in dialogue about Indigenous issues.   Boasting an audience of approximately half a million listeners throughout Canada and the United States, each episode features experts and guests with callers with a stated goal of improving the lived reality of Native Americans.

The one-hour program airs live, five days a week, from 10-11 a.m. PST (or, 1-2 pm EST). You can listen to the program streaming online, or you can tune-in on your radio if you are in range. If you want to call in, the number is 1-800-99-NATIV. New topics are posted at the beginning of each week and you can also sign up to their mailing list to have topics delivered to you. You can also listen to the archive of past topics, ranging back over a decade, although the program hasn’t always been 5 days per week. The program is produced in Anchorage, Alaska, by the native owned/operated Koahnic Broadcast Corporation.

CBC Digital Archives

CBC has a fantastic archives site called CBC Digital Archives. This site has something for everyone and contains both television and radio archives going back many years. It is interesting to note that two of the three most popular clips are about aboriginal issues: the Oka stand-off in 1990 (with a rather young looking Peter Mansbridge) and piece on survivors of the Residential school system from 1991. The third most popular video is Justin Trudeau’s eulogy for his father in 2000.

I did a bit of exploring in the archives under Society and Native Issues and focused on the history of the residential School system. It is interesting to see how Canadian Societal views about the Native residential school system changed over time as expressed through the CBC media. The earliest clip called “A New Future” is from 1955 and presents a wonderful and cheery perspective of residential schools as a feature to salute “Education Week”. It is definitely biased as the well dressed, cheery, anglicized Indians never stopped smiling – a must to see to understand how residential schools were justified and understood at the time.

Fast forward to 1969 for the video Government takes over schools to see when the federal government took over the residential schools from the churches. This clip also shows a huge change in attitude and understanding of the residential school. This clip and the 1970 the clip “Losing Native Languages” shows recognition that isolating aboriginals from their culture was not such a good idea after all. The cover picture for this radio broadcast is from the 1955 “A New Future” video from 1955. The videos then progress towards the present as the abuses of the aboriginal students were recognized: Native Leader charges church with abuse (1990) to the official apology’s from the Canadian Government including: We are deeply Sorry (1998) and A long-awaited Apology (2008). There is also an interesting clip from 1974 showing a day in the life of the Indian Affairs Minister: Jean Chretien (former Prime Minister of Canada)

This is a great site to find out about Canadian Aboriginal issues both past and present.

CBC Aboriginal

CBC has an Aboriginal portal called CBC Aboriginal. To start, the site has a listing of current top headlines, for example on June 17, 2011 here were a few of the listed news items:

The site also has regular sections such as Promote: Legends series started in 2002, Special features such as Truth and Reconciliation, Arts and Culture, Radio featuring ReVision Quest, the Legends Project, and Spotlight featuring Aboriginal Artists.

This site also has links to Learning the Path: for aboriginal youth, Ab-Originals: Aboriginal Music, CBC North: Daly programing in Aboriginal Languages, CBC Archives: Aboriginal related television and radio clips, the Aboriginal section of the National Film Board of Canada and In Depth features such as History of Aboriginal Canadians.

This is a great site to find out about Canadian Aboriginal issues both past and present.

Aboriginal Media

One of the main focuses of this module, and indeed of 521 in general, is on media and its impact in the formation and preservation of culture and tradition.  Below I’ve unearthed a collection of Aboriginal media sources which may be of value to many of you in search not only for continued weblog posts, but also for links connected to your major projects.  The links have varying degrees of professionalism.  If you click on the first handful of them, you’ll notice it appears as if they are linking the same page each time.  My understanding is that occasionally they will show different content, based on the selected region – but I’m not completely convinced of that.  Some of the other websites appear very basic.  I’m not sure its fair to draw generalizations about the quality of these types of aboriginal media sites based on the few that are here, but suffice it to say that I don’t think they are supported by a strong financial base.  And if they are being funded well, then I think much of the money is going to waste!

Aboriginal Media
Aboriginal Newspapers:
National: www.ammsa.com/windspeaker/index.htm
Alberta: www.ammsa.com/sweetgrass/index.htm
Saskatchewan: www.ammsa.com/sage/index.htm
British Columbia: www.ammsa.com/raven/index.htm
Ontario: www.ammsa.com/birchbark/index.htm
Northern News Services Online: www.nnsl.com
Nunavut: www.nunatsiaq.com
Aboriginal Magazines Aboriginal Times: www.aboriginaltimes.com
SAY Magazine: www.saymag.com

Aboriginal Radio:
www.ammsa.com/cfwe/index.htm
www.angelfire.com/indie/candidate/enter.html

Aboriginal Online News Sites:
www.turtleisland.org/news/news-box.htm
www.redwiremag.com