By Natasha Baldin
Moderator and Indigenous broadcaster Rick Harp opened the panel on “Indigenous Perspectives on Political Journalism” by highlighting the intentional broadness of the title, making space for various interpretations of what political journalism means through an Indigenous lens.
The panel discussed how to navigate a mainstream media landscape that, as UBC journalism professor Candis Callison described, is “intent on protecting a settler-colonial social order.”
Callison challenged some of these representational harms as the co-author of Reckoning: Journalism’s Limits and Possibilities. She’s also the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous journalism, media and public discourse at the University of British Columbia.
In the five years since Reckoning was published, Callison and other panelists agreed that many of these realities around Indigenous representation in the media — and where Indigenous journalists fit into the mainstream media landscape — have remained unchanged.
“Indigenous journalists, in some ways, are war correspondents,” said Harp. “We are documenting the war against our peoples and our very existence is at stake.”
Niigaan Sinclair, an Anishinaabe columnist with the Winnipeg Free Press and a professor at the University of Manitoba, said Indigenous journalists are making their contributions in a media landscape that does not take care of them in return.
He said the responsibility lies solely on Indigenous journalists to insert “good news” stories from Indigenous communities — such as a grandmother teaching beadwork to the next generation — that mainstream media is not generally interested in.
“When we create our own content, we demonstrate civility to a country that never practices civility back to us,” said Sinclair, who was recently named winner of the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award for non-fiction for his book Wînipêk: Visions of Canada from an Indigenous Centre.
Panelists agreed on how mainstream political journalism is not tailored to Indigenous consumers and instead reinforces settler-colonial understandings of Indigeneity.
“Media is not a source of facts and knowledge for individuals — it’s actually just there to sustain belief,” said Veldon Coburn, an associate professor and faculty chair of the Indigenous Relations Initiative at McGill University.
Brett Forester, a reporter and broadcaster with CBC Indigenous, added that mainstream media is “complicit in advancing the colonial project.”
“Propaganda is typically what the Canadian media has delivered to the Canadian public with respect to Indigenous people,” he said, echoing Sinclair’s point that negative Indigenous stories are treated as fodder for clickbait.
Panelists highlighted how coverage of the Idle No More rallies in 2012 was overshadowed in the mainstream media. Infamously, news of a key moment in the historic Indigenous movement was eclipsed when a coat-wearing monkey was released in a Toronto IKEA on the same day.
“Tens of thousands Indigenous peoples talking about how to make a better country? No. Monkey. Let’s use that!” Sinclair said with a laugh.
Pam Palmater, a Mi’kmaw lawyer and author as well as a professor and chair of Indigenous Governance at Toronto Metropolitan University, said the mainstream media’s vocabulary around Indigenous activism betrays deep-seated biases.
Use of the term “land defender” has a loaded connotation when used in mainstream news media, she suggested, equating the idea with violent protest.
Palmater said the fundamental cultural intentions behind the term are lost.
“Our job has always been to protect the territory and all living things in the territory, so in the English language, we translate it as land defender, but to (Indigenous people), it’s not a political commentary at all — that’s who they are as people,” Palmater said. “With the term ‘land defender’ or ‘protester,’ you’re not going to hear about their beautiful culture and how connected they are.”
“What other choice do they have but to live out their culture?”
Before looking for solutions to reimagine political journalism from an Indigenous perspective, Forester said it’s important to seek a shared understanding and knowledge base between Indigenous and mainstream media.
“We need to start from an understanding of our shared reality of the current human rights situation in this country,” he said, “because I don’t think we’re there yet.”