Tag Archives: television

NorthWest Indian News (NWIN)

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http://www.nwin.tv/NWIN-Welcome.html

Northwest Indian New appears to be a very interesting website where one can access issues and events important to Indian people. The website claims to be a positive voice for Indian people and is currently being broadcasted into more than 50 million households throughout Canada and the United States. There are also plans to share NWIN programs with European and Asian audiences in the future. NWIN provides training and employment for tribal members in a non-traditional industry.

There is a section where one can access to watch all the episodes of NWIN. The latest episode available is number 44 from November, 2010. I am interested in searching for more current episodes but I am unsure of when they would be posted if at all. I watched a few of the most recent episodes and they are presented by a Tulalip Tribal member named Carissa Ramsey. She covered topics such as fisheries, the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, events at local schools, The American Indian Film Festival, and Native art. There are several other reporters besides Ramsey. They use various locations to report news.

I am glad to see that all the reporters are of Aboriginal decent and are from tribes. I also looked at the credits section of the website and noticed that almost all individuals involved with NWIN are Aboriginal and their bands and tribes are also mentioned. This seems like a reliable website for Aboriginal peoples to acquire information of the latest news that affects Native people.

We Shall Remain

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We Shall Remain is a five-part television series (7.5 hours total) which portrays Native American perspectives in the teaching of American history.

The series includes details not commonly found in traditional American socio/history teachings, including violent resistance towards geographical expulsion and opposition to cultural oppression. You can stream the full series online. The website also outlines the program’s new media engagement strategy, involving web-exclusive videos on topics such as language revitalization, tribal sovereignty, and native enterprise. A teacher’s guide is also included to help bridge new media through to classroom learning.

RedWAY BC News

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http://www.spiritlinking.com/products-services/redway-bc-news-e-zine

RedWAY BC News is a free monthly on-line magazine.  It has been published since 2003 by Spiritlink Communications.

According to the founder of RedWAY, Kristen Kozuback the mission of the publication is to build relationships based on respect and recognition and to celebrate the diversity of cultures, talents and strengths of Aboriginal people..

Many of the recent efforts by RedWAY focus on ways youth can build media technology skills and develop the experience necessary to start careers or businesses as writers, editors, videographers, and photographers.  RedWAY‘s YouTube channel and video productions (made by youth) can be found here.

Here are some of the regular sections from the magazine:

  • JPEN – Job Postings & Employment News
  • From the Streets and RHR: readers helping readers
  • Smoke Signals: a community announcements page
  • International Indigenous News: often self-governance items

Readership Demographics:  most of the readers and contributors are Aboriginal youths who reside in British Columbia – 85% self-identify as Aboriginal; 80% live currently in BC; over 45% are under age 30; 70% have their own social networking site.

Teaching Tip: In coordination with Spiritlink, RedWAY, and the First Nations School Net Program, 7 youths attended the 2008 Gathering our Voices Conference held in Victoria, May 17-20, 2008.  These youths were provided with hardware (laptops, cameras) + software + brainware (training) + spiritware (encouragement and empowerment) and the result was a significant ‘earning and learning’ experience.

Adele Alexander commented on her reflection the conference in a holistic way.  Her posts describe the influence the conference had on her:

  • intellectually
  • emotionally
  • physically
  • spiritually

I found this to be a very interesting way of having students look back at an experience. It transcends the mere ‘lessons learned’ and gets into a more authentic reflection of any experience.  Researchers looking into innovative, grassroots efforts to empower Aboriginal youth through media should definitely take a look at RedWAY.

CBC Digital Archives

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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

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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.

TigaTalk: Fun Educational Technology to support children’s phonetic development

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While there have no doubt been many instances of pejorative depictions of Aboriginal peoples on television and in film, there are increasingly common examples of inclusive and supportive depictions as well. Take TigaTalk, for example. Launched in 2008 on APTN, TigaTalk is a children’s television show (preschool level) that uses puppets, cartoon, and live-action stories to explore First Nations culture. This show is also attempting to address preschooler’s mastery of linguistic skills (in Aboriginal languages as well as English. TigaTalk also has an iOS App developed with licensed speech and language pathologists, providing a fun way for children to develop speech sounds through playful voice-controlled games that can improve speech clarity, articulation, and instill confidence.

Media Awareness Network

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Here’s a link to an interesting website.

http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/aboriginal_people/aboriginal_broadcasting.cfm

The Media Awareness Network is a non-profit Canadian entity that provides digital resources to support media literacy.  The link I have included is to an article “The Development of Aboriginal Broadcasting in Canada”, which provides an overview of the history of Canadian Aboriginal programming.

While the article covers some of the same ground as the Faye Ginsburg article in the ETEC 521 readings, it focuses only on Canadian content and delivery, beginning in the early days of CBC’s shortwave radio programming in the 1950s through to the launch of the (very successful) Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) in 1999.

The website has an abundance of other material related to the portrayal of aboriginals in the media, under a broad section on Aboriginal People.