Page - 167 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Augie Fleras | Ethnic and Aboriginal Media in Canada 167 dominant Euro-Canadian discourse, combat stereotypes, and ensure that histories and contemporary issues reflect Aboriginal perspectives, aboriginal media emphasize different newsnorms to challenge and change (Retzlaff 2007). In brief, another slogan may capture the distinction between ethnic and aboriginal media. If ethnic media are about improving the prospects of living together with differences, then it may be more accurate to describe aboriginal media as advancing the challenge of living apart together. Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples may possibly possess one of the most advanced broadcasting systems in the world (Roth 2006). Nowhere is this more evident than in Northern Canada, where aboriginal communities have exercised control over the local media, largely by appropriating satellite technology to meet social and cultural needs (Meadows 1995; Molnar and Meadows 2001). The Broadcasting Act in 1991 proved pivotal as well. It not only enshrined an aboriginal right to control over their own communications, but also instructed mainstream broadcasting to ensure ‘the special place of aboriginal peoples’ in its programming and employment. In keeping with the spirit of the Broadcasting Act, the CRTC approved the creation of a national Aboriginal network (APTN) in 1999 with an availability to 8 million Canadian homes (all cable companies are required to carry APTN as part of their basic consumer package, costing each subscribers about 15 cents a month, which is then allocated to APTN). As a national network by, for, and about aboriginality, APTN provides a platform to produce culturally and linguistically relevant programming for aboriginal men, women, and children, while providing Canadians with a window into the aboriginal world. Creation of national mediaspace that is enshrined in federal legislation also promises to counteract mainstream miscasting by promoting a positive and realistic portrayal of Canada’s First Peoples across a broad range of topics (Molnar and Meadows 2001 Baltrushchat 2004; Retzlaff 2007). As Lorna Roth (2006:327) puts it when describing APTN as a symbolic meeting place for aboriginal peoples and non aboriginals to communicate their common interests: APTN has enabled indigenous messages to be heard by constituency groups that might have never had access to a live person of Aboriginal descent; it provides an opportunity to share national imageries and histories, to build bridges of understanding, and to bridge cultural borders. To what extent have Aboriginal Peoples (and indigenous peoples in general) and diasporic populations embraced the information superhighway to bridge and to bond? In response to the question of what can the electronic frontier deliver to a peoples on the fringes of power and far from the centres of