Co-movement revisited: reflections on four decades of media transformation in Canadian Indigenous communities

ABSTRACT

This viewpoint introduces a long-view assessment of communications developments in northern Canada through a conversation between the authors. Discussing how communications and cultural development practices in Canada’s north (north of 60 degrees of latitude) have changed in the last four decades, we advocate relationship-building and co-movement in the development of communities’ cultural persistence.

À travers une conversation entre les auteurs, ce point de vue présente une évaluation à long terme du développement des communications dans le nord du Canada. En discutant de la manière dont les communications et les pratiques de développement culturel dans le nord du Canada (au nord des 60 degrés de latitude) ont changé au cours des quatre dernières décennies, nous plaidons en faveur de l’établissement des relations et du co-mouvement dans le développement de la persistance culturelle communautaire.

A partir de una conversación entre los autores del presente punto de vista, se realiza una valoración de largo plazo de los adelantos alcanzados en el ámbito de la comunicación en el norte de Canadá. Analizando cómo en esta zona (localizada al norte de los 60 grados de latitud), las comunicaciones y las prácticas implementadas en torno al desarrollo cultural se han modificado durante las últimas cuatro décadas, abogamos por la construcción de relaciones, así como por el comovimiento, para fortalecer la pervivencia cultural de las comunidades.

KEYWORDS:

• Technology – Media, ICT
• Civil society
• Aid – Development policies
• North America (exc. Mexico)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Lorna Roth is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

Patricia Audette-Longo is a journalist and PhD candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University.

Notes

1. The term Indigenous peoples refers to people indigenous to what is now Canada, including Inuit, First Nations, and Métis peoples. Inuit means “the people”, and refers to people who are indigenous to the Arctic (Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada n.d. a). First Nations refers to people who are indigenous to more southern regions of Canada; there are more than 50 First Nations in what is now Canada and more than 50 indigenous languages spoken across the country (Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada n.d. b). Métis people trace their heritage to marriages between European and Indigenous peoples, often linked to Canada’s eighteenth-century fur trade (Métis Nation n.d.).

2. Nunavut was established as separate from the Northwest Territories in 1999 after land claims settlements were made with Inuit through the early and mid-1990s (Historica Canada n.d.). Inuit make up the majority of Nunavut’s population – numbering approximately 35,000 people (Historica Canada n.d.) – and their values and language inform Nunavut’s self-government model (Government of Nunavut n.d.).

3. Roth elaborates on Koenig’s concerns by sharing an excerpt from an interview with him (2005, 97–98). In the same vein, and drawing on Gross’s (1991) work, Jiwani writes, when a community “is never represented in the media landscape, it can be a form of ‘symbolic annihilation’” (2010, 271). Of course, as Shohat and Stam have argued, to be seen (or to see oneself) onscreen or in media is but one part of the equation: “Media spectatorship forms a trialog between texts, readers, and communities existing in clear discursive and social relation to one another” (1994, 347). In other words, as Hall (1999) writes, the relationship between how messages are mediated and how they are unpacked or decoded is not linear and not necessarily over-determined. One brings a cross-section of experiences and expectations with them when they set themselves in front of a screen; this range also makes room to resist mediated representations and stereotypes, and to imagine and advocate alternatives. Here, Roth’s other work (2011) is particularly relevant for its focus not just on what people see onscreen, but on how media is created, by whom, and under what circumstances cross-cultural understanding is or is not facilitated via policy and practice.

4. For further discussion of the programme’s legacy in communications for development, and in Indigenous communities in particular, see Roth 2005, 102–106; Stewart 2007.

5. As examples, see: Coldevin 1977a, 1977b; Lougheed and Associates 1986; O’Connell 1977; Stiles and Litwack 1988; Valaskakis 1981, 1988; Valaskakis and Wilson 1985.

6. The combined population of the Nunavut, Northwest, and Yukon Territories is approximately 111,000, equivalent to about 0.3 per cent of Canada’s total population.

7. Isuma Igloolik Productions created the 2001 film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, directed by Zacharias Kunuk, which won the Caméra d’Or prize at Cannes.

8. In 1974, the federal government passed a broadcasting law called the Accelerated Coverage Plan, requiring all communities with a population of 500 or more, located above the tree line, to receive satellite dishes for reception only. This created dividing lines; the cut-off of 500 was felt to be an arbitrary decision.