Social Critical Analysis of First Peoples Television Media in Canada

First Nations in Historical Perspective HIST 3216
Professor Wesley-Esquimaux
Wednesday, April 19 2006
This work Copyright (C) 2006 Richard Birch

Abstract
This paper conceptually frames the historical event of the construction and realization of aboriginal televisual media entities in Canada, as it relates to the impact of social change, cultural epistemological shifts, and historically mediated perspectives of First Peoples in hegemonic mainstream Canadian society with Marcusean critical thought. Where most research articles in review on the history of the creation of the first aboriginal television media organizations in Canada, this paper posits the notion of the existence of such televisual media as reifying the ethnic subordination aboriginals have been subjected to in both historical and contemporary contextualities. The licensing of a First People’s television network, though initially not without a positive impact as for it’s potential for the transmission of language, ideas, artistic and cultural ideologies intra-regionally between First People communities is important, this paper looks at the potential argument that the social cost of such an endeavour is not serving the permeation of distinction of the people it’s programming is designed for, but more so it serves techno-capitalist hegemonic principles of ethnic and social minority oppression built on the basis of signifying and social “other”, as opposed to the culturally distinct. As First Peoples television is licensable by the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to broadcast throughout the North, the underside of such action maintains the social positionality measurable by sociocultural, political, and economic marginalization of First Peoples in Canada. Visibility of minorities has a two-fold symbolic interactional outcome. It can build conceptual bridges between subcultural groups and tie subjective meanings together to strengthen distinctiveness and cultural hegemony. In further qualitative abstraction, it also reifies the stereotypes and misrepresentations the initial purpose of aboriginal media was intended to eradicate. Through the utilization of both, the positionality of organizations such as the APTN, serves to reify social minority status in measurement of cultural oppressive one- dimensional perspectives.

Culture is a social construct. Culture as a constructivist phenomenon permeates in varying forms around the globe, yet patterns of institutional hegemonic socialization posit the basis for cultural creation and meaning. Culture can be explained, subjected to critical analysis, and measured through epistemological methods of subjective discursive accountability. To look at ancient cultures with the intent of measuring such construction and permeation is difficult to examine in such symbolic ways because the nature of such civilizations are older than any methodology known to the social and historical sciences. However to examine the emergence of a culture, or specifically the emerging cultural shift from ancient ways of living to a newer sense of modernity is much more reasonable, for the concepts of method and social institution are jointly accessible. One can examine the growth, the change, and the meanings within a culture through an examination of not only it’s relationship to various forms of social institutions, but also in it’s involvement in the development, ownership, and regulation of such institutional hegemony. A specific conceptual model of cultural analysis, as a primary unit of qualitative measurement such as First Nations television media is useful in examining the development and migration from historical hegemony to significant postmodern social meaning. Arguably the execution of a First Nations television media in Canada, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) did the very act of developing a bridge of different cultural groups in both the symbolic and sociological sense. Yet there is a different perspective to take into account, that the very existence of an aboriginal-centric television station reifies quite possibly the cultural oppression and subordination First Nations people have been subjected to for centuries under techno-capitalism. In a one-dimensional postmodern society, the existence of Aboriginal-centric media is limited in it’s effect to construct a cultural ideology outside that of it’s being a social minority for the social institutional infrastructure of television media reifies racial oppression. In the process of attempting to create a Canadian Consciousness of the North, it is a challenge to argue that a real social consciousness in mainstream society has been successful in developing an acceptance of a nationwide service “reflecting their diverse cultural perspectives and multiple languages” (Roth, 252).

It is not fair to state however that the creation of a First Nations television media has not had a place in formulating accurate cultural representations of the peoples it was designed to showcase and program for. As Lorna Roth calls it, “Pre-Northern Television” was a period in Canada saturated with “southern produced imagery of First Peoples…characterized by stereotypical misrepresentations, when and if they were present at all in the visual domain” (Roth, 253). It was a period where corporate owned and legislated media policy had no intention of initiating a task of positive and historically accurate aboriginal cultural representation, nor a task of consolidating accurate socio-historical context with modern social institutions (254). It was a period where there was potential to create inclusive epistemology and mediated language of First Peoples ideologies into a budding Canadian multicultural landscape, but it was as such unrecognizable to the upper echelons of media regulatory bodies such that would later become the CRTC and Telefilm. However, in all advanced industrial societies, to construct anything other than the paralysis of cultural existence and power, is to not formulate that which is the “other”. In other words, to recognize the importance of First Nations heritage and social knowledge in Canadian media, and to thus facilitate the usefulness of an aboriginal people’s mediated institution, would be to offset the imbalance maintained in a one-dimensional society. To announce the permissive nature of an industrial society built on exploitation of social minorities would be to demonstrate that there was an absence of agents of social change historically in Canada. This positioning of early middle twentieth century Canadian ideology can be taken to a further abstraction. In modernity, where a classist construct positioned around a Eurocentric hierarchy is paramount, the “degree to which technical progress assures the growth and cohesion of [communal and inclusive] society…recedes before the realistic notions of a non-explosive evolution” (Marcuse, xiii).

Unilateral cultural media and design is systematically promoted by the merchants of politics and their purveyors of mass information and epistemology. Language constructs a universality of national idealism, realization, and purpose, and thus a universe of discourse is only ever maintained in terms of social-historical perspectives to be occupied by the language that serves monopolistic dictations (Marcuse, 14). To include First Peoples perspectives and interest in mass mediated programming and media ownership, would be to open up Canadian society to multi-dimensional thought. For many years, this served only First Nations peoples theoretically, until of course, until the passing of the Telesat Act (1968) in 1969 in the Canadian Parliament which kick-started discussions around the development of aboriginal northern television (Roth, 254). As Roth calls it, a “Romancing of the North” gave insight to the very true interest of intra-regional and experimental northern-centric telemedia programming (Roth 254). Significantly, in 1969, it also became apparent for First Peoples to devise and initiate a telemedia entity as a formulaic response to the White Paper first read in Parliament that same year (Comeau and Santin, 161). To remove significant status from aboriginal society in Canada as a result of the dismantling of institutional Indian Affairs and the Indian Act of 1867 was parallel to the thinking of oppressive reification. In this act, to remove the status, you remove significance. But this does not remove the fact that First Peoples are the “other” in opposition to mainstream Canada. The White Paper was potentially one of the most problematic documents ever to be subjected towards First People in Canada, not only for the functionality of status eradication, but for it’s capacity to hinder further development of aboriginal heritage and cultural progression outside the assimilation impulses of mainstream legislation and policy.

Could it be defined as a measure of protest or retaliation that from a First Peoples’ perspective an aboriginal telemedia entity could offset the potential cultural dangers of such documentation? Could it also be explained that there was the potential for the creation of such a aboriginal-centric telemedia institution to be successful? Was there to be the existence of rationality and development synergy in place which would benefit all policy makers and forms of cultural regulation whether it be federal or first nations? There had to be a convergence of interests from both mainstream and First Peoples in order for the funding to solidify. It came about in the late 1970’s that in order for the production of aboriginal telemedia, the acquisition of jointly beneficial work projects had to be executed for the federal government to invest money in field tests and in obtaining access to Anik B satellite technology (Roth, 255). But all protest is a product of rationality and reification both socially and historically. In a very Western mode of thought, that which is real in a world of immediate experience must be understood and subverted in order to become that which it really is (Marcuse, 123). In other words in a social-historical context, any forms of protest, whether it be in the form of marches against powers that oppress, or the creation of subverting social institutions like the APTN, reify that which makes their existence deemed necessary. In a totalitarian place like multicultural Canada, a county of technological and cultural rationality, the purest form of transmutation is Reason.

Which is why the granting of a broadcasting licence on October 28, 1991 by the CRTC was inevitable.

There has been an absence of true liberal tolerance in Canada, as there still is in many ways in regards to racial minority issues. To manifest an electronic environment where the viewpoints of aboriginal peoples is important and positive, certainly. The existence of such a network is ultimately intended to promote diversity and aboriginal language to First People’s across five time-zones, and throughout a uniquely Canadian multicultural landscape. Most of APTN’s programming originates from First People’s production companies and approximately 70% of it originates from Canadian production companies. In regards to broadcasted languages, the APTN broadcasts 60% English, 15% French, and 25% various Aboriginal languages (Baltruschat, 47). Multilingualism and multilingual programming has been a keystone of the APTN since inception. As First Nations seek to obtain and increase official status of their languages in Canada, programming that revolves around the diversity of aboriginal language has been important in the promotion of the preservation of language in Canada. Aboriginal traditions have also been important components of APTN programming as so far being able to utilize the powerful storytelling abilities native Canadian cultures possess (47).

But it is through the Marcusean notion of social distinction where one can argue that the nature of the APTN serves not those who it’s programming is designed for. As all technocapitalist structures of knowledge are typically and hegemonically viewed in the social as “progressive” and “cooperative” by rights of the virtue of resource utilization, the causality involved in the creation of the APTN can arguably be derived from the extent Canadian history, and how Canadian policy, governmental affairs, and of course documentation such as the White Paper constructs experiential antagonism, thus “guides the development of the philosophical categories of truth and untruth in postmodern oppressive thinking” (Marcuse, 125). In further comparison to conceptual practices of power like those posited by the White Paper, the perception of an organization such as the APTN by the Canadian Cable Television Association (CCTA, Canada’s largest cable television industry lobby group) was profoundly negative at the onset of a proposal of such a station, and that any regard of the APTN would not be of any cultural significance. In other words, yes the ATPN could be transmitted and distributed as a specialty channel at the expense of Canadian consumers, but not with any further or different significance than any other specialty channel according to the CCTA. Thus to the CCTA and it’s corporate members, the APTN as something offered in any of the normal basic cable product line packages was ultimately out of the question (Roth, 262). Though there is great irony on the meek perception held by the CCTA, a déchirement ontologique as it were; appearance and reality; untruth and truth; and as history clearly now sees, unfreedom and freedom, are ontological conditions attributable to the creation of culturally significant media (Marcuse, 125). One can find it easy to think that the CCTA’s response to the licensing of the APTN as unsavoury to the social causality of the network’s programming agenda on generating cross-cultural sensitivity is not based on the fair distribution of media products to the peoples of the North as it was clearly for the CRTC. In some way, could it be said that the CCTA in their objective protesting of ascribing distinctiveness to the APTN is in some way relevant to arguments against removing the native status of First Peoples and their cultural ideologies? Possibly, but it is probably not an intentional occurrence.

Is the construction of an aboriginal mediaspace a helpful way for cross-cultural opportunity and healing? Is the construction of aboriginal mediaspace and organizations like the APTN another way for First Peoples to fight the challenges placed on them in a one-dimensional racially charged society still yet to displace itself from centuries of cultural assimilation practices? Or, is the existence of the APTN another new example of cultural replacement and assimilation First Peoples are being subjected to in postmodernity? What ideas do the Canadian airwaves reflect in postmodernity? If the CRTC, by mandate wishes to be the merchants of multicultural and “multiracial” constituency via technological telemedia, it is logical to question what parties does this action serve? The notion that the APTN is being served by this phenomenon is yet to be ascertained for it is clear “the APTN still has a way to go before it can effectively compete for cross-cultural audiences with central and powerful networks such as those of the Quebecois and the English/American broadcasting services” (Roth, 267). Yes, that the APTN now exists after years of struggle to become one the players in the telemedia arena in Canada is a profound accomplishment. However, the struggle with takes place to constantly value and consolidate the power relationships with Canadian media institutions and distribution organizations reifies the constant struggle First Peoples deal with in the preservation and maintenance of Aboriginal cultural ideology.

As aboriginal telemedia is powerful as a means to project the powerful storytelling abilities of native cultures to its viewers, based in traditions that originate through centuries of oral history, and cultural heritage construction, it’s relevant limited ability to create vast understanding is yet to be measured and examined. Though the APTN is available through Canada, there is an (in)visible and (in)audible presence, or absence of aboriginal impact as a telemedia market competitor. As Roth points out, “it is easy to pretend liberal tolerance when there is an absence of a subject/person/community from one’s visible and conscious world. What is outside of the purview of our senses can be faded out of our world of social relations” (Roth, 264). In other words, how can it be correct to deduce that a telemedia company, owned, operated, and programmed by aboriginal peoples, has the ability to construct deep and real liberal tolerance in an industrial postmodernity where all actions as a social minority in political and economic venues reify their oppression? In technocapitalism the emphasis and focal purveyor of all progression and mediated development of ideas and language is tension, which of course fuelled by the means of racial and social unrest, to posit a clearly “other” –centric form of programming is strictly that in the social, the social externality. The unfortunate danger and risk to the development of First Nations television in Canada is again, attributed to the distribution and acknowledgment of language and epistemology that competes with mainstream white, Eurocentric, Anglocentric hegemony. “Knowledge of a mandatory new presence on the airwaves of a constituency group whose values and programming qualities are significantly different from those of ‘mainstream’ Canadian television might very strongly challenge the silences of racists sitting quietly in their living rooms” (Roth, 263). Yet, one can only hope that someday Canada in it’s image and constant quest for multicultural synergy can rise above such social reification, to go beyond the technocapitalist rationalization that makes us see the need to signify that which is different and yet do no more about it, and finally value First Nations telemedia programming as important, culturally expressive, equal, embracing, and revolutionary. For it to be revolutionary will mean it is integral to the people of Canada in its entirety, a quality the APTN, by virtue of the CRTC, the CCTA, and the means to which media ownership parameters are commercially constructed, has limited from the very start. As Canadians we are all with the same rights to this quality of programming, to the quality of information, and to the valuable means of social expression such as that of First Peoples. Yet, the same systems at place that are set up to regulate the APTN as other channels of importance in Canada, serve to maintain formalized systems of expression. In this regard, a concern exists among critics of the APTN about that messages that are expressed, ideas and representations of the true Aboriginal experience. “Canada urgently needs to develop the talent base to support the creation of television drama productions that are written, produced, and directed by Aboriginal people” (Baltruschat, 47).

However, it seems the success of the APTN lies in the huge step of acquiring the “full legal enshrinement of Northern First People’s broadcasting transmission rights” in 1991 (Roth, 169). Though in a one-dimensional society such as Canada, where the unilateral focus of all cultural epistemology and presentation is for the purpose of rationalizing all social existence, a television network, even one charged with the purpose and drive to stand out as something culturally significant and positive, reifies that which made it necessary. Governmental apparatuses of power and master narratives based on ruling relations are not homogenous, unified, or subject to clear definitions of communal harmony. They are institutors that structure political factions, classist thinking, and thus institutionalize that which maintain subordination. To think that that any form of media ownership or control, even that in the hands of cultural significant groups, defines real externality to oppressive processes that keep them as the social “other”. We reify our existence as minorities, whether be it in terms of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or religiosity. However, one must keep watch on this entity to discover how able it will be to realize true social and institutional self-development outside the confines of techno-capitalist doctrine.


References:
Baltruschat, D. (2004) Television and Canada’s Aboriginal communities: Seeking opportunities through traditional storytelling and digital technologies. Canadian Journal of Communication. (29) 1, 47

Comeau, P., and Santin, A. (1990) The White Paper. The First Canadians: A Profile of Canada’s Native People Today. Pp. 5-23, Toronto ON: James Lorimer and Company.

Marcuse, H. (1964). One-Dimensional Man. Boston, Mass: Beacon Press

Roth, L. (2000). Bypassing of Borders and Building of Bridges: Steps in the Construction of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network in Canada. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Roth, L. (2005). Something new in the air. Montreal, PQ: McGill-Queen’s University Press.