Early in the game, when southern television began to bombard the airwaves in northern communities, Canada’s Aboriginal people made the connection between cultural survival and the ownership and control of media.
Community radio and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC) Northern Service short-wave radio had been an integral part of northern life since the mid-1950s. By the early 1970s, 16 per cent of Northern Service programming was in Inuktitut and, with CBC and government-funded training and technical support, radio began to be used throughout the North for everything from political information and local news to bingo and the communication of family messages.
The catalyst for Native-owned and operated broadcasting came in 1973 when the CBC began beaming southern Canadian and American television via satellite into northern communities. The Inuit welcomed some programs, such as Hockey Night in Canada, but many Aboriginal leaders and elders saw southern programming as a threat to their language and cultural traditions. They were upset that the sounds and images entering every home failed to reflect anything of their own reality and values.
One young leader, Rosemary Kuptana, who later became president of the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation, likened the onslaught of southern television to the neutron bomb. "This is the bomb that kills the people," she noted, "but leaves the buildings standing."
Between 1976 and 1981, with large grants from the federal government, and new satellites Hermes and Anik B, Native organizations from Alberta to Quebec began to experiment with interactive communication and the production of original programming. The pilots were so successful that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Canada’s regulatory agency, licensed the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada in 1981 to set up an Inuit broadcasting corporation to provide Inuktitut-language television services to the Northwest Territories (NWT), Northern Quebec and Labrador.
Later that same year, the CRTC approved an application from two First Nations groups to establish a satellite radio network to deliver programming in several Aboriginal languages to communities in the Yukon and western NWT. By this time, CBC’s Northern Service had doubled its Aboriginal-language programming.
By the early 1980s, the components for Aboriginal-owned and -managed broadcasting were in place across the country: politicized Aboriginal organizations; 13 Native communications societies (Inuit, First Nations and Métis); a sympathetic regulatory body (CRTC); and a government with new policies and funding programs.
In 1983, the Canadian government set up a $40-million fund to stimulate indigenous radio and television production in northern regions of Canada. That same year, the federal government came out with the Northern Broadcasting Policy. It set out the principles of "fair access" by First Peoples to northern broadcasting distribution systems, so as to enable them to develop their cultures and languages. In most parts of the North, this meant access to the CBC’s distribution system. But the policy proved difficult to implement and failed to meet expectations for Aboriginal services.
In 1988, following years of persistent lobbying by Aboriginal communications groups, the federal government allocated $10 million for a dedicated northern satellite transponder. Television Northern Canada (TVNC) spanned five time zones and extended to the Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Arctic Quebec and Labrador—one-third of Canada’s land mass. In 1991, the right of First Peoples to have control over their own communications was enshrined in the Broadcasting Act and, in 1995, the CRTC approved TVNC’s application to make Aboriginal programming available to southern communities.
TVNC’s success led to feverish lobbying to establish a national Aboriginal network. Support from the Canadian public was surprisingly strong at the time. According to an Angus Reid survey, two-thirds of Canadians were in favour of it, and 68 per cent said they’d be willing to pay 15 cents more on their monthly cable bill to make it happen.
In 1999, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) became a reality. As part of a first-tier (basic) cable service, APTN became available to 8 million homes in the North and across southern Canada via cable TV, direct-to-home and satellite.
The Globe and Mail captured this important milestone in an editorial:
"Just to be seen on TV makes people genuine in a way that almost nothing else in the 20th-century culture does. This is the psychological underpinning for the CRTC’s recent decision to grant a licence for an Aboriginal television network. Not only will the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network be a place for Native people to present themselves to one another in English, French and 15 Native languages, but it will be an electronic arena in which many Canadians will encounter Aboriginals in ways they might never do otherwise."
APTN has opened many doors. It has provided Aboriginal artists, writers, actors and producers with the skills and the means to bring Aboriginal people their own images and messages—through documentaries, dramas, children’s series, educational programs, news, current events and even cooking shows. And it has provided an opportunity for Aboriginal people to cut through the oppressive stereotypes that dominate southern television and to present new models for youth.
But the Globe and Mail’s prophecy about giving non-Aboriginal Canadians an opportunity to encounter Aboriginal society through television may have been overly optimistic. APTN’s position on the channel grid in southern parts of Canada forces Canadians to surf up to Channel 55 and beyond in order to find programming produced by Aboriginal people.
Nevertheless, APTN is a giant step, and each year sees parallel development in regional Aboriginal broadcasting services and Aboriginal community radio. In the 40 years since the first radio broadcast in Inuktitut, Canada has become identified, as sociologist Lorna Roth puts it, "as a model of media resistance against the overwhelming focus of continental integration in North America."
