Baltruschat, Doris. “Television and Canada’s Aboriginal Communities Seeking Opportunities through Traditional Storytelling and Digital Technologies.” Canadian Journal of Communication, Volume 29, No 1. Simon Fraser University, 2004.
By: Rabia Khan
Presented at the 2003 Television Conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Doris Baltruschat uses his paper to present trends in Indigenous film and television productions. He argues that these types of digital media portrayals become a platform to integrate Indigenous storytelling traditions and oral culture into today’s technological age. Through the use of film and television, First Nation societies are able to express critical issues their community face from land claims to language preservation. Another significant factor is the complementary relationship between Indigenous oral tradition and digital technology. Baltruschat describes how First Nation producers and directors are able to link their communities to a global platform while preserving their societies unique tradition of story-telling. As a result, Canada has a more mainstream and contemporary insight into the cultural, economic and political affairs of Indigenous communities. This creation is also particularly significant since it may potentially foster the creation of a dichotomous Canadian society consisting of intersections between two cultural groups.
These digital developments in Indigenous societies were first made possible around the late 1970s and 1980s when the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) initiated public service channels for Native-language programming. In 1983, the Northern Broadcasting Policy and the Northern Native Broadcast Access program were initiated as a result meaning many new opportunities for First Nation producers and television developers to educate and preserve their cultural traditions, as well as more accessible programming for the broad Canadian audience. Some of the key programs Baltruschat features in his article include the film, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner– a story based on Inuit legend, championing the message of community needs over personal desire. This movie gained international acclaim and also won the 2001 Cannes Film Festival best feature award. Another notable development was Cool Jobs– a television series developed by the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. The show was designed to target First Nations youth in the job market. And lastly, the historical documentary series Waasa-Inaabidaa: “We look in All Directions” which was also integrated with PBS. The series expands on the idea of collaborating Indigenous tradition with modern technology by featuring an interactive website to compliment the program.
These resources are critical because they provide a solution to preserving Indigenous story-telling and oral tradition in a modern and accessible way. Bob Cranmer, a First Nations documentary producer describes ne need to preserve these traditions as urgent. He says, “I need to tell the stories before our elders pass on. There is urgency for some stories to be told.. Our stories are generally not shared with the bigger world, so there is a need for educating people.. I see myself as a messenger of stories people entrust me with.” (Cranmer, Interview, 2003). First nation digital developments, such as the ones above, illustrate the solution to his concern. These resources not only facilitate integrated digital productions that preserve Indigenous traditions, but it also dictates the future direction of Canadian oral and visual technology across the country.
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Beaton, Brian, Kevin Burton, Susan O’Donnell, Sonja Perley, Andrew Sark, and Brian Walmark. “Community-based Broadband Organizations and Video Communications for Remote and Rural First Nations in Canada.” (2007): n. pag. Web. 24 July 2014. <http://meeting.knet.ca/mp19/file.php/16/Publications/2007-November-VideoCom.pdf>.
By: Julia Pressman
In a 2007 Community Informatics Research Network (CIRN) Conference in Italy, authors Susan O’Donnell1, Sonja Perley, Brian Walmark, Kevin Burton, Brian Beaton, Andrew Sark presented a paper titled “Community-based broadband organizations and video communications for remote and rural First Nations in Canada”
This paper cited lots of members of First Nations communities including Grand Chief Stan Beardy of the Nishnawbe-Aski Nation who stated that “[This project] represents a remarkable achievement by our people to not only harness the power of information and communication technologies but also adapt these technologies to address our political, social and economic agenda.”
Not only does this paper highlight how they are able to build understanding about how two community-based First Nations organizations in Canada are using video communications on broadband networks to support economic and social development in remote and rural First Nations but also how these communities are using online video to share their stories with each other, with other First Nation communities, and with the wider outside world. This ties in beautifully with Thomas King and what we’ve studied in class about exploration and importance of storytelling within the First Nations community.
The organization sees themselves as supporting First Nation development goals. They are creating awareness and an open platform for learning about First Nations. A Membertou First Nation staff member said “I think more people have to be more open-minded in regards to all our cultures. Even though we’re all First Nations, we all have a different way of seeing things, and we have different perspectives and different goals.”
This paper is a great resource showing how technologies are contributing toward a greater understanding of Canadian First Nations culture and opening up the possibility of some very productive dialogue.
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Cherubini, Lorenzo. “The Metamorphosis of an Oral Tradition: Dissonance in the Digital Stories of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada.” Oral Tradition 23: n. pg. Web.
By: Bobby Goldsmith
Lorenzo Cherubini is a professor of Education at Brock University in Hamilton Ontario whose research is concentrated in the areas of teacher development and policy analysis. Cherubini is the Director of the Tecumseh Center for Aboriginal Research and Education where within a network of Aboriginal undergraduate and graduate scholars engage in understanding and promoting healthier Aboriginal communities.
In his qualitative ethnographic study Cherubini uses digital stories from the Omuchkegowuk area in Ontario to discuss how stories shared in digital forms are accepted as traditional teachings from which new understandings could be ‘gleaned’(Cherubini). Cherubini finds that digital stories provide a sentimental and profound response for both the teller and the recipient and that digital stories play an important role for mainstream researchers from different backgrounds to interpret and appreciate Aboriginal people’s traditions. He outlines the importance of oral tradition for Aboriginal peoples in Canada and calls it an ‘ancient art form’ and that that digital storytelling is understood as a form of short narrative told in the first person enhanced by visual text and symbolic imagery (Cherubini). He says digital storytelling is an extension of oral storytelling, it is welcomed by Aboriginal peoples, and represents a “continuation of what Aboriginal people have been doing from time immemorial”(Cherubini) Cherubini allows us to consider the intersections of story and literature and finding a common ground for an Indigenous- sovereighnist critical approach (Mccall, 121).
As one of our areas of interest for this project focuses on the interactive inclusion of digital tools in literature and creating collaborative identities, Cherubini’s article allows us to examine how digital stories allow for an interdisciplinary collaboration of Indigenous traditions of literature and orature. By focusing on the interactive inclusion of digital tools in media, we are creating common ground of Indigenous story telling for the future and allowing to recognize digital forms of Indigenous story telling along with what Rita Wong mentions of paying attention to language for decolonization for the future (Wong 115).
Works Cited:
Cherubini, Lorenzo. “The Metamorphosis of an Oral Tradition: Dissonance in the Digital Stories of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada.” Oral Tradition 23: n. pg. Web.
McCall, Sophie. “Diasporas, Indigenous Sovereignties, and Métis Writing in Canada.” 50th Anniversary Interventions: 121-122. Web.
Wong, Rita. “Watersheds.” 50th Anniversary Interventions: 115-117. Web.
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Clements, Marie. The Unnatural and Accidental Women. Vancouver: Talonbooks. 2000. Print.
By: Milica Komad
In the 204th issue of CanLit, titled “5oth Year Interventions”, Christl Verduyn, author of “Back to the Future”, observes the last 50 years of literature have seen an “explosion of writing and critical work by Canadian and Québécois women, by writers from Canada’s multicultural communities, and by writers from the country’s Aboriginal communities”. While this is an impressive feat, what Christl believes will have the most importance and value for the literary community in years to come, is the electronic production that will take place due to growing technology. Ian Rae, author of “The Case for Digital Poetics”, agrees, and further argues that the intervention that will be successful in years to come is media technology that affords new creative opportunities (Rae). These interactive and intermedial technological features can be found in Marie Clements’ play The Unnatural and Accidental Women.
Marie Clements, a Canadian Metis female, is a playwright, producer, performer, director, and screenwriter, and has previously worked as a radio reporter. Her history with different avenues of technology have enabled her to challenge the patriarchal, colonizing narratives that are ever-present in Canadian literature by offering alternative, technologically advanced identities and narratives to marginalized people that should have a voice in Canadian literature. Marie’s website speaks to this, and true to her technological nature, implements a Youtube video
on the homepage to promote her new film “The Language of Love” which looks at Aboriginal victims of Residential Schools, and gives them an avenue to reveal their lost, rejected stories.
Between 1965-1988, Gilbert Paul Jordan, known as the Boozing Barber, killed 10 women on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, by poisoning them with alcohol. The women were predominantly Aboriginal, and due to stigmatization and discrimination, their deaths were labeled unnatural and accidental, and the women were portrayed in the media as nameless, faceless alcoholics. Meanwhile, the white, male Jordan received extensive media coverage, detailing his childhood, occupational career, and late life. Clements’ challenges the media’s dehumanizing tropes of the women, by using poetry, multimedia facets such as slides, SFX, and video to reclaim the women’s lives, and present a new identity for each of the individual victims (Johnston).
Her play, The Unnatural and Accidental Women honours the women’s lives, by presenting them with aspirations, personalities, families, and histories. What is denied to them in the public media sphere, Clements provides using new technological methods to orally present their stories. The SFX and slides are used to reconstruct their individual identies, yet they also have a unifying factor, that creates a female community in which the women join together to resist the violent, racist, patriarchal colonization they have fallen victim to.
Works Cited
Johnston, Kirsty. Challenging Women. canlit.ca. Canadian Literature, 8 Dec. 2011. Web. 25 July 2014
Rae, Ian. “The Case For Digital Poetics”. Canadian Literature 204 (2010): 134-137. Academic Search Complete. Web. 25 July 2014
Verduy, Christl. “Back to the Future”. Canadian Literature 204 (2010): 140-142. Academic Search Complete. Web. 25 July 2014.
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Dyson, Laurel Evelyn, et al. Information Technology and Indigenous People: Issues and Perspectives. Hershey, Pa: Information Science Pub. (an imprint of Idea Group Inc.), 2007.
By: Milica Komad
“Information Technology and Indigenous People” by Laurel Evelyn Dyson; Max Hendriks; Stephen Grant is a valuable text that explores the planning and execution of technology in Aboriginal communities in order to serve Aboriginal people. While the textbook has a large scope that encompasses Indigenous communities of Australia, Asia, South America, and North America, chapters 1 and 3 focus primarily on Canadian Aboriginal communities.
Chapter 1 looks at the protocols involved in creating an information technology community within a group of 200 Metis female authors. The Metis Women’s Circle is a not-for-profit organization that represents Metis and Aboriginal women across Canada, offering services and programs that are technologically focused, to develop a greater knowledge of Aboriginal experiences for the Canadian public. These information technology programs serve two purposes: firstly, they allow Aboriginal people the ability to present their experiences, and secondly, they allow the Canadian people to learn about these experiences from credible, first-hand sources.
In Chapter 3, this idea of credible, first-hand Aboriginal sourced literature and information is further explored. Representations of Aboriginal people on the internet, and through media technology are looked at, and determined to be from an “outside worldview”, that is Westernized in nature, and is biased in that the information accessed through media lacks original context, or in other words, a first-hand Aboriginal source. Laurel Evelyn Dyson; Max Hendriks; Stephen Grant write that the “information is completely distanced from the Indigenous peoples whom the information is purported to represent”, which reconstructs and redefines an entire group of people based on a Western, hegemonic model. Laurel, Hendriks, and Grant believe that through information technology, Aboriginals will be able to reclaim their identities and create a social narrative based on their own history, language, and culture.
The website Strong Nations is a great example of simple information technology that can lead to a stronger, more equal, distribution of Canadian literature that creates a balanced literary canon. By balanced, I mean to say, marginalized groups are also represented in the identity of Canadian literature. Author Chimamanda Adichie, in her TED talk titled “The Danger of a Single Story” makes a strong claim that “the consequence of the single story is this: it robs people of dignity; it makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult; it emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.” The website Strong Nations works to provide Aboriginal stories to the public, with a wide range of literature spanning from cookbooks on traditional Native cuisine, to collections of poetry by Cree females, to non-fictive accounts of contemporary Aboriginal music in Canada. With their website slogan stating “We bring Indigenous books into your lives”, this form of information technology is one example of how important Laurel, Hendriks, and Grant’s claim is that providing programs that help enable technological informed Aboriginal communities will create a more balanced Canadian identity.
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Episkenew, Jo-Ann. Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing. Winnipeg Manitoba : University of Manitoba Press , 2009. Print.
By: Bobby Goldsmith
Jo-Ann Episkenew’s research covers a wide range of issues which include: Indigenous literature, narrative medicine and narrative policy studies. She is the director of Indigenous People’s Health Research Center at the University of Regina and a faculty member of English and Health studies at the University of Regina.
Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing is a book written by Jo-Ann Episkenew outlines the importance of linking the historical trauma of Canada’s Indigenous peoples and Indigenous literature as a way of healing individuals and communities today.
Chapter six of this book, Final thoughts and Future directions points to how Indigenous literature has the ability to shape politics and public policy. She goes on to point out that originally the Canadian public did not have interest in Indigenous stories and today Indigenous peoples stories ‘dominate’ the news. Episkenew outlines how Indigenous literature today is not only in autobiography, fiction and drama but as well as film scripts, screen plays and song lyrics. She provides an example of how contemporary Indigenous storytelling utilizes colonial language and literary in art projects such as Native Earth and Turtle Gals. She also points to Indigenous filmmakers such as Big Soul Productions who engage Indigenous youth on how to use film to tell stories of contemporary Indigenous peoples.
Utilizing new technology to tell stories of contemporary indigenous people is important in many ways such as recognizing Indigenous literacy films as what Larissa Lai mentions as a ‘deeper exploration of digital possibilities and interactive knowledge production’. Also how indigenous literature in film and other forms of media can provide a more contemporary exploration of the effects of Canadian government policies on Indigenous communities.
Works Cited
Episkenew, J. (2009). Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing. Winnipeg Manitoba: University of Manitoba Press.
Lai, L. Journals in Digital Space: Electronic Circulation, Cultural Commons, and Intellectual Labour. Canadian Literature , 137-140.
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King, Thomas. “Episode 1 – Season 1.” The Dead Dog Café Comedy Hour. CBC Radio. 1997. Web. 29 July 2014. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG0wxJeg-cg>.
By: Julia Pressman
The Dead Dog Café Comedy Hour was a radio comedy show on CBC Radio One running from 1997 to 2000. It was of course inspired by the café of the same name that appears in Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King. The show borrowed numerous elements from its’ fictional counterpart including the voice of Thomas King himself. Despite the name, the shows’ run time was only 15 minutes long.
The podcast humour is very dark. There is a mix of political critique and social commentary that made the voice actors stars in the First Nations community. According to a 2007 Globe And Mail interview with Thomas King, the show “The show turned Indian stereotypes inside out and upside down. It put a big red clown’s nose on the cigar store Indian. The show also made Thomas King a household name on both sides of the international border.” Here’s Episode One.
I selected this podcast radio hour because it approaches the political, social and economic agenda of First Nations in a very non-confrontational and open way. It allows for non-Natives to hear these issues from a Native point of view, which is not always easy in a world of cultural white dominance.
Through mock cultural stereotyping, the show addresses white perceptions of Native peoples. This is very important because it helps to create the possibility of a dialogue between Natives and non-Natives. It is often through humour that people find themselves more comfortable, and therefore more open to discourse. In this article by Paul Mcghee, he argues that humour can improve communication within a workplace between management and non-management employees. It is not such a far stretch of the imagination that the principles outlined in his article can be applied to inter-cultural communications as well.
Works Cited:
King, Thomas. “Episode 1 – Season 1.” The Dead Dog Café Comedy Hour. CBC Radio. 1997. Web. 29 July 2014. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG0wxJeg-cg>.
Mcghee, Paul. “Humor Improves Communication.” Health, Healing and the Amuse System: Humor as Survival Training. N.p.: n.p., 1999. N. pag. 1 Mar. 1999. Web. 1 Aug. 2014. <http://www.laughterremedy.com/articles/communication.html>.
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Miguel, Muriel. Miguel, Gloria. Mayo, Lisa. “Spiderwoman Theater.” Brooklyn, NY, 2013. Web. Accessed July 28, 2014 <http://www.spiderwomantheater.org/index.htm>.
By: Rabia Khan
Founded in 1976, Spiderwoman Theater is an indigenous woman’s theater collective that creates environments intertwining native women traditions and arts communities, in order to examine their role in social, cultural and political concerns. Over the years, Spiderwoman Theater has become a new wave in the arts community as it weaves Indigenous storytelling into contemporary Western theater and develops into an international voice for Indigenous women and communities at large. Spiderwoman Theater represents the fruits of the 1970s feminist movement, a time when Muriel Miguel, Gloria Miguel and Lisa Mayo (three sisters of Rappahannock and Kuna heritage, collaborated to question gender roles, stereotypes, issues of sexism, racism, economic oppression, domestic violence, and intertwined these topics with humor, popular culture and their personal journeys.
Currently, Spiderwoman Theatre is the longest running feminine performance group in the United States and has featured workshops and performances in venues across North America, the most notable being:
– Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue
Their productions have also included notable performers like the Colorado Sisters and won numerous awards including the 2010 Women’s Caucus for Art- Lifetime Achievement in The Visual Arts as well as the 2013 Otto Rene Castillo Awards for Political Theatre.
What makes Spiderwoman Theater so relevant for this research project? They pave the path for a future in Canadian literature and storytelling by bridging the gap between Indigenous traditions in a Western platform –they enable an innovative method of fostering a collaborative Canadian identity. Through digital advancements in visual arts and theater production, Spiderwoman also may be presented with the opportunity to integrate modern technology into their mission of challenging audiences to intertwine traditional Indigenous performance into contemporary topics of controversy. For the first time ever, digital media and technology has hit art platforms and allows theater productions to utilize interactive websites, Skype and sources of new media to make massive changes in live theater. With these advancements in place, the intersection between Indigenous and Western ideologies can easily foster a collaborative future in national identity.
Works Cited
Austin, Matthew. “Why Theatre & Technology?” Theatre Sandbox, Arts Council England. http://www.watershed.co.uk/ished/theatresandbox/about/why/ [Accessed July 28, 2014].
Bowerman, Eddie L. About the Kuna Indians. http://public.cwp.net.pa/~bowerman/page3.html [Accessed July 28, 2014].
“Colorado Sisters – Womyn Warriors.” Online video clip by Projectreachnyc2, YouTube, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R7BXE-rdWo.
Gardner, Lyn. “A new stage age: why theatres should embrace digital technology.” The Guardian, 2010. http://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2010/mar/23/stage-theatre-digital-technology-ished [Accessed July 28, 2014].
Otto Rene Castillo Awards for Political Theater, “2013 Otto Rene Castillo Awards for Polical Theater Announced.” http://www.spiderwomantheater.org/docs/2013_OttosPR.pdf [Accessed July 28, 2014].
Rappahannock Tribe, Virginia Indians Today. Virginia’s First People, Past and Present, 2014. Virginia Department of Education. http://virginiaindians.pwnet.org/today/rappahannock.php [Accessed July 28, 2014].
“Red Mother Clip.” Online video clip by Aidan Mackesy. YouTube, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPan4golfTA.
Spiderwoman Theater. Spiderwoman | About Us, 2013. Brooklyn, NY. http://www.spiderwomantheater.org/SpiderwomanAboutUs.htm [Accessed 28 Jul. 2014].
Women’s Caucus for Art, Honor Awards for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts. “2010 Honor Awards.” http://www.nationalwca.org/LAA/LAA2010.pdf [Accessed July 28, 2014].
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I am very happy to see you getting a good start on your bibliography. This is going to be such an interesting research project; excellent sources so far. Thank you.
MOST important, you are meant to list these source alphabetically using MLA style. You can identify who contributed the source, at the end of the annotation. Thanks – and enjoy 🙂
Hi Bobby, so in your annotated bibliography on Taking Back Our Spirits, you mentioned that Episkenew “points out that originally the Canadian public did not have interest in Indigenous stories and today Indigenous peoples stories ‘dominate’ the news”. Is this her personal experience/opinion or was this based on her research? I’m wondering if it’s fair to say that Canadians had no interest in Indigenous stores, because there are a number of reasons why Canadians seemingly had “no interest”. It is quite possible that their stories were inaccessible/or kept within a select group of people, and until new media and technology has taken off, their stories were lesser known?
And their stories that “dominate the news”- what kind of stories is she referring to, do you know? When I think news, I’m thinking about the 6 o’clock news, and the stories I think of relate to the Oil Sands or the Attawapiskat First Nations. Maybe it’s not the kind that Episkenew had in mind, maybe…
Side note, I noticed a number of words (Indigenous, Indian) in some of the annotated bibliographies that aren’t capitalized. Just wanted to let you know so you can correct them!
Please also take a look at my team’s website, too!
https://blogs.ubc.ca/voxpopuli/
Hello Jenny, thank you for your comment.
She uses the comment in the context of what gets displayed in television regarding politics and Indigenous affairs. She uses her experiences as a Indigenous woman -growing up in Canada and witnessing how Indigenous news coverage was limited. Her analysis is comparing how much growing attention there is today- in her book she actually uses a few examples of the different types of news coverages on Indigenous peoples from then and now.
The stories that dominate the news she provides many examples such as treaty, violence, land disputes, Stephen Harper apologizing at the house of commons residental school compensation. She uses these examples of how many of this current news was not ‘newsworthy’ when she was growing up.
Hi Bobby, thanks for the clarification. Do you think the current issues that make news in regards to the Indigenous populations are showing them in a good light? No doubt that the issues many of them face are important and demands to be addressed, but what kind of perception does that create of them? I can see that this is where new media and technologies come in, but what about in mass media?
Hello Jenny, thanks for the follow up.
From my own experiences i would point out that the mass media has been shining a light of resistance amongst the indigenous community ( and yes this is a good sign) but there is still much more needed to fully address many of the Indigenous issues in the mass media. This has created a strong perception of the Indigenous community along with their supporters.
Hi Julia,
I really liked your notes about “Community-based Broadband Organizations and Video Communications for Remote and Rural First Nations in Canada”-I thought it was an excellently chosen source which highlights and ties together many of the issues we’ve studied in this course into one. I was particularly struck by Grand Chief Stan Birdy’s statement “but also adapt these technologies to address our political, social and economic agenda”, which for me taps directly into King’s attempts to “take” and repurpose traditionally western or “modern” stories to tell different narratives about Indigenous points of view or issues. I was also reminded of Wendy Wickwire’s comments on the twentieth century conception of Indigenous myths and stories as ahistorical and static, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Your summary of this source made me wonder-does technology and online spaces make it harder to ignore voices perceived being “outside” of the norm, or does it make it easier for these voices to get lost in the mailstrom?
Another thing about the source which struck me was this quote “I think more people have to be more open-minded in regards to all our cultures. Even though we’re all First Nations, we all have a different way of seeing things, and we have different perspectives and different goals”-this highlights an interesting assumption which I think is often taken for granted, glossed over, or not addressed-even in our studies in this course, I don’t think we’ve given it much thought or critical evaluation-the fact that “Indigenous issues” is in itself a blanket label which assumes a level of uniformity and sameness in otherness, if you like, amongst different Indigenous groups. In doing so, language is perhaps subtlety or ignorantly used, once again, to erase individuality and identity.
On a final note, I found the whole idea of oral stories being recorded and circulated as videos quite intriguing-in contrast to Wickwire’s retellings of Robinson’s stories, where the process of oral story telling is simulated so some extent on the page, video allows these stories to be preserved as they were inteneded to be told, on some level. On the other hand, the telling remains static after it’s recorded, just like with print. Which leads an intriguing thought-is it the process of being spoken aloud which makes something truly “oral”, or is it the process of being told to an interactive audience, over and over, or is it something else entirely?
I found an interesting youtube video of Wickwire speaking about “Indigenous issues”, which made me think more about the problems and potential of oral storytelling being preserved on video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7IlNMuwC-k
Cheers, Breanna
Thanks for your lovely comment, Breanna!
“does technology and online spaces make it harder to ignore voices perceived being “outside” of the norm, or does it make it easier for these voices to get lost in the maelstrom?”
That’s a really interesting question!
I think it can go both ways. On one hand, these marginalized groups whose voices are often unheard benefit from the ‘signal boost’ of having this large soapbox that is the internet.
On the other hand, once you have something on the internet, there’s always the chance that your words will be taken away from you and twisted and turned into a new meaning. (This is going back to lesson 1.3!)
What do you think Breanna?
Hi Julia-I agree with you about the fact this question could go either way, although the aspect of words being twisted and misinterpreted hadn’t really crossed my mind in this context before. It raises a really interesting point though, especially in terms of authenticity. On the anonymity of the internet, how can anyone truly know for sure, in many situations, if the opinions and words being expressed, the voices being heard, truly belong to the groups they claim to represent? Does the internet then, perhaps, open up a venue for voices to not only be suppressed, but also stolen and repurposed by those that oppressed them in the first place?
Hi Breanna!
Yes, I think about it this way: Once you put your words out on the internet, it is very possible for someone to come along, cut and paste as they will, or even take snippets entirely out of context.
I’m not saying this is what is inevitably going to happen- but it’s a possibility!
Hi Julia & Breanna,
One of the issues with communicating via the Internet and technology is that you lose the face-to-face contact. You lose a lot of the non-verbal aspects of communication, which can be problematic in some situations. It is so easy to entirely misinterpret what one is trying to say, to miss the tone of the message, etc. That’s happened to me before, and I’m sure everyone has encountered it one time or another! This, I guess, goes back to Breanna’s point about “stolen and repurposed” words- very intriguing point you made!
Hi Bobby,
I liked your summary of “Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing” very much, and it raised several questions in my mind while I was reading. First, thinking back to King’s recounting of Coyote changing the ending of a traditional Western before Lionel’s eyes, do you agree that the film and media portrayals of Indigenous peoples and issues have taken a more positive turn in recent years? Do you think they are any more accurate? If digital media is becoming a tool through which more objective, positive, or accurate portrayals of Indigenous peoples and cultures can be circulated, who is setting the tone for this change? Whose is the “voice” disseminating down through digital media to be heard and perhaps listened to?
Hello Breanna, thank you for your comment.
I would begin by saying that film and media portrayals of Indigenous people have increased and I would say this itself is a more positive approach. From what i have learned i would point out that there is still a lot more needed to be considered ‘positive’ i would use the term ‘accurate’ only because now we are seeing news coverages of for example, Idle no more, or last years TRC.
The tone for the circulation is gathered collectively i would say, from the Indigenous groups themselves through resistance and education, academics have a huge role as well, i would point out that prior post secondary I was for the most part clueless on Indigenous history/ affairs. These voices would be (in my part) one of themain ‘drivers’ to be passed down through digital media.
Hi Bobby-I agree that “accurate” is probably a better term to use at this point than “positive”, and probably less ambiguous, because “positive” is always going to be in the eye of the beholder. I think you raise an interesting point about the lack of information and education about Indigenous peoples and issues in most regular school curriculums-many people related this same experience in their initial blog posts. I think perhaps that this opens up questions about the role digital media has in education itself, in who has access to information, and who is providing the information, allowing people to educate themselves about a topic(in this case Indigenous issues) as never before, and hopefully with a more accurate, unbiased source of information.
Hi Julia,
I enjoyed reading your annotated bibliography on “The Dead Dog Cafe”. I actually used to listen to this all the time when it was on and it actually reunited me to listening to the podcasts again.
I recall hearing about the reactions to “The Dead Dog Cafe” when it was running and I agree the “show turned Indian stereotypes inside and out”, as quoted by Thomas King. You further referenced that “it is often through humour that people find themselves more comfortable, and therefore more open to discourse.” King also once noted when speaking of the “The Dead Dog cafe” that “humor is best when you’ve got the person who is listening one or two steps behind and they’re hustling to stay up with you and in that hustle it’s as if they almost have to snap their heads around to see what just hit them.”
Also, King has also stated in regard to “The Dead Dog Cafe”, “Drollness and quietness are essential elements of Native humor. But it also can be a cutting humor sometimes. The most serious stuff many times we’ll handle with humor, just to cut the sorrow out of it. At the same time, it raises the sorrow. It’s a funny business, humor.” This is taken from a New York Time interview.
First Nation humor, in my experience anyway, is more a form of the latter. Cutting humor. It makes reference to painful times and situations and then laughs at it. Sort of like the sad clown. In regards to the “The Dead Dog Cafe” podcast, do you think that this gave a platform for First Nations people to also start telling of their hurt? To start making known the pain felt from Canadian First Nations people through the humor given on the “The Dead Dog Cafe”? I.e. residential schools, racism, alcoholism, stereotypes, etc?
Hi Kristin! Thanks for your comment-
I’m glad you brought up this point and I agree with you. I do think it created a platform for First Nations to express, share, and explore their culture and their hurt in a way that was never possible before.
Kristin,
I think you ask a very important question. I have no doubt, that by using humour to make average Canadian’s aware of Native identity and experience, there was a platform inadvertently created for making their hurt known too. In a Globe and Mail article, the producer of the show made a bold statement, saying “I think people in Canada didn’t know Indians were funny. I really mean that. I didn’t know that”, which only brings to light the fact that many people still have an Us vs Them mentality embedded in their cultural experiences and outlook on “others”. Humour is just one way the door was opened to Natives telling their stories; both the funny ones, and the sad ones. The author of the article notes this, writing “the radio program is about much more than native satire, as funny as it can be. In a nation that considers comedy a national trait, the Dead Dog Café has used humour to force two societies to come to grips with how they see each other, and themselves.”
Throughout the program, I think there was also room for political commentary to be expressed in a serious way as well. Like with all theatre, television, and radio, the audience is suspended between serious moments and humourous moments, in order to capture different levels of storytelling. One instance of this was observed by the Globe and Mail writer at the Regina showing of the Dead Dog Café Victoria Day Special. According to him, at one point, King, “in a serious moment” stated “Ottawa has no interest in maintaining Indian people as a culture. They’re interested in Indians as an artifact.”
While comments like this may not represent the entire Native experience as a whole, I think what they Dead Dog Café did successfully do was open the door and start the conversation between average Canadians, both white and Aboriginal, about the state of affairs of Aboriginals, in a humourous way.
If anyone is interested in the article, this is it:
http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/series/apartheid/stories/20011109-1.html
I agree Dead Dog Cafe opened the doors for dialogue between average Canadians about the state of affairs of First Nation peoples. Thomas King also used the humor to stir what I’d like to call “Canada’s melting pot.” He wrote an episode of Americans coming to Canada to hunt. A punchline was, “American’s only have jobs and schoolchildren to hunt.” Another episode that comes to mind is when Quebec stated there were no First Nation people occupying Quebec prior to the French.
The reason I’m pointing out these two examples is that though this was, in my opinion, witty humor, the background purpose of the humor was resistance and vehicle in which to use humor to bring reality of the injustices going on.
If this doesn’t make sense, I apologize. It’s really late.
Sorry. Here is the works cited for my reference. I pressed enter too quick.
Austen, Ian. “A Radio Serialist’s Next Episode: Running for Canada’s Parliament.“ The Saturday Profile. New York Times. Oct. 10, 2008. Web. 3 Aug 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/world/americas/11canada.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Hey Rabia,
I think your source by Baltruschat is an important one, because it not only highlights the concerns, but ways in which Aboriginal needs are being met through technology, and more specifically, film and television. I thought it was interesting that you acknowledged the way Aboriginal communities are offered a global platform for preserving their culture, as well as consequently spreading their culture, through unique traditions that are engrained in their ways of storytelling. I was reading an article, by a PHD social worker named Raven Sinclair, who looked at “Special Indigenous Issues” and different tools being used to help combat social problems in Aboriginal communities. One of the ways was through technology and film, and he observed that “In many Indigenous cultures, artistic expression is a medium through which traditional knowledge, culture and worldview are disseminated and contemporarily, artistic media have astonishing ways of making painful subjects more palatable.” While it is based off of social working principles and not literary ones, I think it is still relevant in understanding the ways technology has positively influenced Aboriginal experiences and the sharing of these experiences.
Hi Rabia!
You were right, your sources really do give way to interesting discussion! Particularly Baltruschat’s paper. Reading about it reminded me of the American documentary I saw called Reel Injun that goes over the history of Indigenous representation in Hollywood cinema, a sordid one touched upon with Charlie Looking Bear’s father in Green Grass Running Water. Canada is, like most of the world (Hollywood rules with an iron fist and, as a film student, my studies have led me to believe they’re the big imperial power in entertainment, damn them), is a huge importer of Hollywood films, so we must have been greatly affected by the parodical portrayals of Indigenous people in them. After reading this article, and learning about Spiderwoman Theatre, do you think these efforts to spread understanding about Indigenous traditions might help in softening the impact of these stereotypical portrayals?
Also, Atanarjuat has some stunning cinematography.
Hi Hannia,
Thanks for your comment. I think that productions put on by Spiderwoman Theater and the films Baltruschat highlights absolutely help to expand the stereotypical portrayals we see from Hollywood. Many of us, including me, admitted that we came into this course with little to no knowledge of Indigenous history and I think a major reason why is because of the limited resources available in the media. Of course since registering in this course, I’ve found great sources and authors that discuss authentic First Nation tradition and history, but if I never took this course, my knowledge would be limited to what I see in the media, Hollywood productions, what I see on TV and maybe the one or two lessons in high school history that discuss Indigenous history- all of which are dictated, most likely, by non-Indigenous authors. This where we develop such stereotypes and parodical portrayals and, sadly, they are hard to breakdown. Spiderwoman Theater and productions like Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner and Waasa-Inaabidaa: ?We look in All Directions? are great sources to challenge this generation-wide crisis that we are faced with. I haven’t seen Reel Injun, but I’m sure it contributes the same way. I’ll be sure to check it out, thanks for sharing!
Rabia
Hi Milica!
I really enjoyed reading your bibliography of “The Unnatural and Accidental Women”. I think this provides a really interesting look into how media shapes our views of others. Obviously it is a terrible thing that the media has such a fixation on monsters in our society – the fact that Jordan got an in-depth look at his childhood and past while the victims were left faceless is disgusting.
I think the similarity between this case and the Robert Pickton murders is very interesting. Like the victims of Jordan, Pickton’s victims were also very much left faceless other than being described as homeless, drug addicted prostitutes. Many of these women were also Native.
I found an article on the Pickton girls that discusses much of what Marie Clements was attempting to accomplish with her play. http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/12/19/jonathan-kay-putting-human-faces-to-downtown-eastsides-missing-and-murdered-women/
My question for you is do you think that victims of less than desirable social standing will ever be given respect by the mainstream media? Or do you think that giving a face to these women is better left for those who truly care to produce the content themselves?
Hi Shannon,
Thanks for the response! I think your question is one that goes beyond the victims of Jordan, or Pickton, and includes the victims of our Canadian culture and society. I believe social standing has a lot to do with not only respect from the media, but respect from individuals. It’s no question that low social standing is considered undesirable, and when certain people are labeled lesser, their entire identities are viewed as lesser. Aboriginal people in Canada are unfortunately, a great example of this. As are low-income, single moms. The list goes on. Chamberlain’s call to meet each other on common ground has the potential to be world changing, because I don’t believe it’s possible to hear someone’s story, and still be able to ignore them or dismiss them. Our Canadian literary canon is so closely linked to our cultural identity because society functions in similar ways that literature does. Once a face is put to the victims, they can no longer just be a victims. They become real people that demand respect, acknowledgement, and inclusiveneness. Once we start telling stories of undesirable people, of oppressed people, of abused people, such as the women in “The Unnatural and Accidental Women”, I believe, we limit the possibility of an Us vs Them mentality, and by nature, demand a greater equal ground between people.
Hey Milica,
Thanks for the response! I completely agree with you. I think that putting a real person into a story makes that story much more real. I think that a large reason mainstream media avoids putting faces to victims who are in unfortunate circumstances is because it forces us to realize that people do live like that. There are men and women on the streets who are abused and oppressed and putting a face to them makes them and their circumstances real as well. Of course, this is something that people should be aware of, but that we often don’t like to think about. Like you said, including the stories of people like this would certainly help to create common ground among everyone.
Hi Shannon and Milica – just to add my insight since I think Shannon asks such an important and relevant question : I think the two questions go hand-in-hand in the sense that it will require someone in the mainstream media to ‘produce the content’ as you stated for victims to be given recognition and respect. Unfortunately, this is the case for all similar situations, it requires a sympathy from the general public for action to be taken. It should be taken upon general citizens who may not be in the highest social standing, all the way up to the highest class of people- however that may be defined- to take it upon themselves to exhibit humanistic action to ensure equality and justice for those who may not have the same resources as the majority.
Like Milica referenced in her response, Chamberlin’s call for common ground remedies this contemporary challenge head-on. By fostering a multi-cultural, egalitarian ideal which breaks down everyday stereotypes and cultural barriers, we become closer to shifting from what the media portrays and instead, closer to finding authentic responses to situations we may not have the fullest insight to. This mindset of having common ground has ground-breaking potential not only in terms of Indigenous and Canadian relations, but also on a world wide scale. It can profoundly affect cultural barriers and how we react to stories that may not directly relate to us.
Milica – I appreciated your annotation for Marie Clements’ play The Unnatural and Accidental Women: specifically this quote:
“The women were predominantly Aboriginal, and due to stigmatization and discrimination, their deaths were labeled unnatural and accidental, and the women were portrayed in the media as nameless, faceless alcoholics. Meanwhile, the white, male Jordan received extensive media coverage, detailing his childhood, occupational career, and late life.”
I also read this play for our project, and annotated it on our blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/canfemlit/annotated-bibliography/). I was outraged when googling about the deaths of these women – all of whom were left nameless, while countless websites are devoted to discussing Jordan.
Violence against Indigenous women is a systemic feature of ongoing colonization against the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island – Andrea Smith wrote a poignant novel about the sexual violence experienced by Indigenous women called “Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide.” For anyone who has further interest, this is a must-read.
For our project, we looked at Indigenous feminisms and the ‘Canadian’ literary canon – we each gave ourselves a direction of the Medicine Wheel and focused on it as we read our primary pieces of media. While reading the Clements play, I was thinking about it from the direction of East – described by Bagese Chilisa as the direction that “represents the spirituality of experience by seeing the earth as alive and responsive in offering prayer respect and kindness. Researchers here are expected to approach these beliefs with the greatest respect. The East is also tide to the direction of Spring, offering a time for researchers to prepare for the journey ahead. This would include waiting for consent to be given as well as acknowledging the interconnectedness between researcher, research participants and the wider community and reflecting on these importances.”
I found it incredibly powerful and helpful to approach these topics with the methodology of the Medicine Wheel – thinking about loss of connection/the regaining of new connections (between women) as a central theme of Clements’ work gave it a truly powerful effect of resilience on me during my many read-throughs.