Ideas from the Bush: Indigenous Television in Australia and Canada

Michael Meadows (Queensland University of Technology)

Abstract: Indigenous communities in Australia and Canada are challenging notions of the cultural hegemony of mass media. Implicit in new media technologies are empowering strategies which have enabled community broadcasters to appropriate media for their own culturally specific use. In Australia, Aborigines have adopted interactive and local television as a cultural resource to aid in strengthening languages and culture. In Canada, a pan-Canadian Native television network enables indigenous access and cultural leadership in a different way. However policymakers in both countries need to become more attuned to the creative options emerging in the form of these "ideas from the bush."

Résumé: Certaines communautés autochtones en Australie et au Canada sont en train de mettre en question l'idée de l'hégémonie culturelle des mass-médias. En effet, implicites aux nouvelles technologies médiatiques sont des stratégies émancipatrices qui ont permis aux radiodiffuseurs communautaires d'approprier les médias pour un usage assorti à leur culture. En Australie, des Aborigènes ont adopté la télévision interactive et locale comme ressource culturelle pour aider à renforcer leurs langues et leur culture. Au Canada, un réseau de télévision autochtone pan-canadien donne aux autochtones un accès et une direction culturelle quelque peu différents. Les décideurs politiques dans les deux pays ont besoin de porter plus d'attention aux possibilités créatrices qu'offrent ces "idées sorties de la brousse".

Introduction

TVNC has been a really good buffer for cultural shock.... You can't measure its worth in money. (President of Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, Jose Kusugak, Iqaluit, Baffin Island, 1994)

TV has changed our lifestyle. It's almost impossible to hold public meetings any more because no one will come. We need this in small communities and radio and television can't take the place of this. (Torres Strait Island community representative, Badu Island in far north Queensland, 1992)

The Tanami network is a highly significant development in the use of communications to improve life in remote, cross-cultural settings such as the Tanami communities [central Australia]....[I]t [illustrates] that the Aboriginal people in this country are not simply a problem to be fixed, but a group who can contribute intensely valuable ideas and insights to the nation as a whole. (Peter Toyne, Yuendumu, central Australia, 1992)

These perceptions of indigenous media in Australia and Canada are indicative of varied responses to emerging new communication initiatives. The perceived impact of non-interactive, satellite television on remote indigenous communities in Australia has been the subject of lively debate since the early 1980s, prior to the launch of Australia's first telecommunications satellite, AUSSAT--now called OPTUS--in 1985. Twelve years earlier in Canada's north, similar fears accompanied the introduction of southern television broadcasts into remote Native communities via the ANIK satellite. Indigenous people in both Australia and Canada continue to perceive mainstream media representations of them and their issues as at best inappropriate, and at worst racist (Valaskakis, 1993; Meadows, 1994). This perception has encouraged indigenous communities to adopt their own forms of media--from community newspapers, radio, and television to interactive technologies. This variety of media forms is indicative of the social and cultural differences both within and between indigenous communities.

Consecutive Canadian governments have supported the development of Native broadcasting, although in recent years this commitment has appeared to be on the wane. Nevertheless, Native broadcasting in Canada received a boost in 1992 with the launch of Television Northern Canada (TVNC), a dedicated Native satellite television network broadcasting across the country's remote north. Ottawa has spent around $10 million over four years in establishing the new network and, in addition, continues to provide some support for Native communications societies producing indigenous programming, many in community languages.

Across the Pacific there has been a slow increase in the level of federal government support for indigenous broadcasting in Australia, but it still pales by comparison with Canada--the 1993-94 budget for community production is around $7.5 million. These funds are distributed to indigenous radio and television producers in remote, rural, and urban Australia. Around 40 diverse groups broadcast regularly on community radio in cities and towns around the country. A handful are engaged in local video production, although many more would like to expand into this important cultural domain.

Community radio continues to play a crucial role in the delivery of a first level of service to many indigenous communities both in Canada and Australia in diverse locations; however, this discussion focuses primarily on indigenous television and questions of cultural policy. Innovative methods of harnessing new technologies highlight their potential for empowerment and it is with television and associated technologies that much of this experimentation is taking place. In this discussion, I want to consider the social, cultural, and policy implications of the development of three specific indigenous media responses: a satellite videoconferencing network linking four Aboriginal communities in the Tanami Desert near Alice Springs with the outside world; local television broadcasting in remote Australia; and Television Northern Canada, serving communities north of 60. Each represents an example of innovation appropriate to the needs of particular communities. In choosing these three remote models, I am conscious of placing undue emphasis on "remoteness" as somehow more "legitimate" than, say, indigenous urban media production.

The Australian environment

The effects of European invasion on Australian languages and culture have been many and varied--exposure to English language and Western genres through radio, television, and video are relatively recent phenomena and must be situated in this context. However, the perception that television threatens language and cultural maintenance more so than other alien technologies remains a central focus for many. In 1985, with the launch of AUSSAT imminent, Aboriginal linguist Eve Fesl described satellite television as a "cultural nerve gas" unless broadcasts were in community languages, helping to convey cultural and linguistic norms. She observed, "Australia is the only country in which these languages exist--they will be lost to the world unless some affirmative action is taken to maintain them" (Fesl, 1985, p. 14).

Her fears closely paralleled those of the former president of the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation, Rosemarie Kuptana who, some years earlier, described the possible effect of "southern" television on the Native people of Canada as like a neutron bomb. Kuptana explained, "This is the bomb that kills the people but leaves the buildings standing" (Brisebois, 1983, p. 107). During a 1993 visit to Australia, Kuptana, now president of the Inuit Tapirisat (the Inuit Parliament), acknowledged the importance of indigenous media control to the Inuit's independence struggle ("Inuit Leaders," 1993).

Western fictional genres entered indigenous communities in Australia through video, which first made its appearance in remote areas around 1982, quickly gaining acceptance (Michaels, 1986, pp. 37-44). Around 80% of Australian homes now have VCRs--one of the highest access rates in the world (Sheldon, Aisbett, & Herd, 1993). Satellite television began to creep into the lives of remote indigenous communities from 1987, accompanied by considerable concern that Western values bombarding indigenous communities through mainstream television would further threaten Australia's 90 surviving indigenous languages. It is estimated that around 250 languages (500 dialects) were spoken at the time of British invasion. Just 20 remain in a healthy state, that is, being passed on to children (Blake, 1981, p. 4; Schmidt, 1993).

In the early 1980s, AUSSAT commissioned a study of indigenous fears, perceptions, and expectations of satellite communication. The report proposed a consultative model for the use of the satellite by remote Aboriginal communities, offering services through a dedicated Aboriginal regional public radio and television service--a kind of Television Remote Australia. The report suggested that the opportunity existed for a series of regionalized satellite services in central Australia, perhaps using existing resource centres, accessing existing Aboriginal organizations and Aboriginal community radio (Walsh, 1984, Vol. 2, pp. 80-107). The report estimated up to 500 indigenous jobs could be created in areas such as broadcasting support operations, interpreter services, dissemination and recording of Aboriginal news, information, music, and oral history (Walsh, 1984, Vol. 2, p. 74). It was ignored. Significantly, many of these recommendations have now been taken up by the newly established National Indigenous Media Association of Australia (NIMAA), Australia's equivalent of the National Aboriginal Communications Society (NACS). Since its inception in 1993, NIMAA has been active in moves towards establishing a national indigenous radio network (first test transmissions in August 1994), and eventually a national indigenous television network (West, 1993).

The impetus for local control of broadcasting came from experiments with local video at two central Australian Aboriginal communities in the early 1980s--Yuendumu, 300 km northwest of Alice Springs, and Ernabella, 400 km south of the Northern Territory city. These small Aboriginal communities have continued sporadically with their own unique forms of video production with both now having produced more than 1,000 hours of local videotapes in community languages. In the early 1980s, American anthropologist the late Eric Michaels undertook an innovative experiment with local television at the Yuendumu Aboriginal community. He showed the Warlpiri people there how to operate VHS video cameras and encouraged them to make programs of their choice for local consumption. The strength of kinship ties and their relevance to the ownership of knowledge was graphically illustrated and is discussed in his important study, Aboriginal Invention of Television: Central Australia 1982-86. This report outlines several local community broadcasting proposals which suggest using the available satellite technology in different ways. One suggests using the satellite as a means of distributing programs from Yuendumu to distant Warlpiri communities (Michaels, 1986, p. 143).

Broadcasting for Remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme (BRACS)

The Yuendumu idea had some influence on federal government decision-making. To counter possible negative effects of satellite television on remote indigenous communities, a hastily prepared program--the Broadcasting for Remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme (BRACS)--has provided around 90 remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities with the ability to interrupt incoming TV and radio signals and to originate and broadcast locally their own material, should they wish to do so. The aim of the scheme was to enable some control of languages and culture through local broadcasting initiatives in indigenous communities of more than 200 people. In an overall sense, BRACS has been little more than an experiment since it began in the late 1980s, although its potential for community participation is enormous. Problems such as lack of community consultation and inadequate funding have haunted the program since its inception, with some suggesting it has been set up so it will fail, despite the empowering possibilities (Venner, 1988; Molnar, 1991, 1993, 1994; Meadows, 1992). A continuing lack of appropriate funding and ineffective training and support services help to explain the varied indigenous community responses to the potentially innovative program throughout Australia. BRACS in 1994 is undergoing a "revitalisation," but this seems to be concerned with restoring technical facilities to their former, often inadequate levels. Effective community training programs remain elusive (ATSIC, 1994).

The Tanami Network

The Yuendumu community pioneered local "pirate" television broadcasts in the early 1980s and are now working with new satellite technology developed by an Australian company, AAP Communications Services (related to Australian Associated Press). This has given rise to an extraordinary new experiment in the central Australian desert. The impetus has again come from indigenous people--from "the bush," an equivalent in many ways of Canada's region above 60 degrees, the north. The Tanami Network integrates videoconferencing and satellite technologies and enables vastly improved ceremonial and family links between four Tanami Desert communities--Yuendumu, Kintore, Lajamanu, and Willowra. The scheme is based on three basic criteria: Aboriginal control; the need for a mixed package of media services (computer links, fax, telephone, local video production, broadcasting); and a wide application of technology to achieve cost-effectiveness (Toyne, 1992, p. 5; Granites & Toyne, 1994). This departs from conventional analyses of such technologies which tend to overlook a holistic framework (Charlton, 1994).

Overall cost of the Tanami project over its first three years is estimated to be $2 million with communities and both government and non-government agencies now essentially supporting the scheme (Toyne, 1994, personal communication). The Tanami communities have taken part in more than 400 hours of videoconferencing involving government agencies since the network began operating in 1992 (Granites & Toyne, 1994). The Tanami communities developed the idea of their own communications network following the failure of conventional systems offered by the major telecommunications carrier, Telecom Australia.

Videoconferencing is used for family and ceremonial contact as well as for meetings, networking of community broadcasting, and negotiations for the sale of arts, crafts, and projects like co-productions with agencies outside the communities. In addition, the network provides for delivery of adult education courses, secondary school courses, and in-service training of teachers. The videoconferencing facilities are used as well to verify the presence of people undertaking the community detention program, part of a scheme to avoid imprisonment for minor offences. The scheme allows for in-service training of health workers and even diagnosis of cases by doctors in far-away urban centres. Two-way communication through the network obviates the need for much travelling between communities and key population centres, which in the area can commonly run into many hundreds of kilometres (Toyne, 1992, pp. 8-12; Granites & Toyne, 1994). The Tanami network links the four Tanami communities to the rest of the world. The network has been used to sell community art internationally--bypassing go-betweens--and making social and political links with other indigenous groups. Already, communities who participate in the Tanami Network have spoken with various representatives of Native North American communities, including the Little Red River Cree Nation in northern Alberta who themselves use videoconferencing to deliver core instruction through the Kayas Cultural College to outlying communities (Kayas Centre, 1994).

The crucial element is local control and the way in which it operates. The owners of the enterprise--the Tanami Network Trust--hold the assets of the company as well as the "traditional knowledge and social outlooks of the Aboriginal groups involved." Between the workers and the owners are four directors, chosen from each of the four communities, whose job it is to "interpret and bring into harmony the intentions" of all users of network services (Toyne, 1992, p. 6; Granites & Toyne, 1994). Thus, the Tanami Network has been incorporated into the social structure of the community, authorizing it and ensuring its success in managing the community.

A significant influence on moves by indigenous people for control of their own media is based on concerns about mainstream media misrepresentation. In Australia the often hysterical media debate over the meaning of a 1992 High Court decision, which acknowledged the existence of Native title over limited tracts of Crown land in Australia, has revealed persistent divisions between indigenous and non-indigenous cultures (Meadows, 1994). In Canada, Valaskakis (1993, p. 293) likens this misrepresentation to a "battlefield of appropriated identity," post Oka. Media play a key role in shaping audience attitudes particularly where direct contact between indigenous and non-indigenous people is absent along with alternative sources of information (Hall, 1981). And many indigenous people reveal a suspicion of the forces which inform mainstream media representation. One recent example from the Torres Strait in far northern Australia is salutary: community elders in 1992 moved to refuse all non-Islander journalists entry to the region because of experiences with media misrepresentation in the past. There are suggestions of an Islander media network, controlling the flow of information to and from the outside world--such is the level of concern about mainstream media representation.

This notion parallels discussions relating to the ownership of knowledge in Aboriginal communities and the clear conflict with Western journalistic notions of editorial control and the public's right to know (Michaels, 1986, 1987; Meadows, 1989). Many Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, for example, have introduced a strictly enforced permit system for anyone planning to visit (Langton, 1993). In one celebrated case in recent years, the producers of Crocodile Dundee were happy to pay a substantial amount of money for the use of a bar in New York while offering traditional Aboriginal landholders in the Northern Territory a pittance. The juxtaposition of indigenous and non-indigenous communication systems encourage violations (O'Regan, 1993). This uneasy relationship between non-indigenous media and indigenous communities remains despite continuing attempts to formulate a workable journalistic code of practice (Meadows, 1987; 1989; Bostock, 1990; Plater, 1992; Langton, 1993).

Torres Strait: A case study

Satellite television first reached the outer islands of the Torres Strait--between the Australian mainland and Papua New Guinea--in 1988. The perception of several Islander communities in 1992 was that satellite television had changed the lifestyle of communities in the Torres Strait. On Murray Island, there was a perception that their language, Meriam Mir, was being placed under serious threat from English-language television, and Western values were generally viewed as unsuitable for children (Meadows, 1995). Meriam Mir has an estimated 1,000 speakers left (Schmidt, 1993). However, on Boigu Island where culture and the language Kala Lagaw Ya is considered to be strong, there was a general acceptance of mainstream television, although there was a perception that accompanying Western values had contributed to an increase in incidences of assault attributed to young men drinking alcohol to excess (Meadows, 1995). There is a general perception amongst Torres Strait Islanders that commercial television, in particular, represents a further threat to language and culture.

Consequently, the existing media association (Torres Strait Islander Media Association [TSIMA]) has moved to set up an Islander television production studio to counter some of these perceived negative effects. TSIMA radio began broadcasting throughout the strait's 17 communities in three Islander languages--Broken (Torres Strait Creole), Kala Lagaw Ya (from the western and central islands), and Meriam Mir (from Murray Island in the east)--and English, in 1986. Before then, communication between islands was by telephones (where they existed), by letter, or by word of mouth. The people's overall perception of the 15 hours of Islander-generated radio programs each week is that TSIMA indeed represents "voice blo mipla all ilan man"--Broken for "our voice." The crucial point here is the need for an Islander perspective in program content--the way programs are made (Meadows, 1995). I suggest that indigenous community control of radio and television to counter such perceptions is crucial, and moves towards strengthening the role of indigenous media in this sense have become increasingly important goals of community broadcasters across Australia.

Indigenous broadcasting policy

Unlike Canada, Australia seems to be some way away from a stable indigenous policy environment. Although an indigenous broadcasting policy was established in 1993, clearly lacking is a continuing, defined program of support for indigenous program production and indigenous media organizations. The limited ATSIC broadcasting budget has severely limited options other than the most basic support for local radio and some local television. Although it has been under threat for some time, the Canadian Northern Native Broadcast Access Program has provided a continuing level of funding support for Native broadcasters since 1983. This is in addition to funds for the establishment of Television Northern Canada and continued TVNC infrastructure support. Also lacking in the Australian policy environment is the will to examine more creative ways of ensuring language and cultural maintenance through television. This attitude became entrenched very early on in the "debate" over whether or not Australia needed its own telecommunications satellite. Other options--like increased use of Intelsat, for example--were subjugated and technologists gained (and still retain) ascendancy in policy debates (Spurgeon, 1989; Paltridge, 1990, p. 145).

The Canadian environment

The introduction of satellite television to remote Native communities in Canada in the 1970s followed the same pattern as the introduction of radio--there was no Native-language programming. Gail Valaskakis (1987) observed, "Native northerners recognized that at the same time as southern media excluded them from information, it played a role in imposing southern Éculture in their communities." In 1983, 10 years after the launch of the first ANIK satellite, the Canadian government introduced the Northern Native Broadcast Access Program (NNBAP). The NNBAP funds 13 Native communications societies which in 1983 produced 12 hours of language programming on radio and two hours of television programming each week. This has increased to 674 hours and 17 hours a week respectively in 1994 (Secretary of State, 1994). This is broadcast to an Aboriginal radio and television audience estimated to be around 200,000, spread across almost 300 communities. The primary objective of the NNBAP is to "contribute to the protection and enhancement of Native languages and cultures in the north" (Secretary of State, 1991).

Television Northern Canada

A series of government-sponsored experimental television projects--Ironstar (1975), Naalakvik I (1977), Inukshuk, and Naalakvik II (1980)--showed that the Inuit could provide their own television programs on their own network, and lobbying for a better deal began in earnest. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) eventually supported the idea of Inuit-generated television and the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (the Inuit Parliament) was given a network television licence in 1981. Funded by the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) and another Inuit broadcasting organization, Taqramiut Nipingat Inc., soon followed. The IBC aired its first program, using CBC facilities, on January 11, 1982. It was broadcast at midnight, pre-empted by Hockey Night in Canada (Brisebois, 1990, pp. 4-5; Kuptana, 1987). A lack of funding and difficulties with distribution (through the CBC, only after 11:00 p.m.) meant continuing problems for the fledgling Inuit Broadcasting Corporation and its associates until early in 1992. The battle for a dedicated northern satellite transponder for Native broadcasting had begun 10 years before Television Northern Canada (TVNC) was first beamed across the north on January 21, 1992.

Television Northern Canada now serves an estimated audience of 100,000, about half of whom are of Native ancestry, spread across almost one third of Canada's land mass. It is a non-profit corporation with members including Native communications societies, who provide Native programming, and the governments of the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, which provide educational television. TVNC is unique in that it is owned by its members, underlining that access to the airwaves is a key issue.

Quality northern programming, Aboriginal language services, local public news and information, and educational programming will be denied the opportunity to serve their intended audiences without control and guaranteed access to a northern distribution system. The past decade has proven this. The next decade should prove differently. (TVNC, 1990, p. 19)

The fact that TVNC is broadcast across five time zones means that the Native organizations producing television programming--often in Cree, Ojibway, Inuktitut, and a range of Dene languages--are each ensured prime-time viewing. The 1994 schedule includes around 100 hours each week of children's shows, educational programming, cultural and current affairs, phone-ins, and a variety of informational programs (TVNC, 1994).

Aboriginal broadcasting policy

The necessary elements for the development of Native communications--and a coherent policy--in Canada were all present by the mid-1970s: "... politicized Native organizations; initial Native communication societies; government-sponsored local media projects; initial northern broadcasting policy statements; the formation of a government program to support Native communications; satellite technology for broadcast distribution; and research to provide information and basic data..." (Valaskakis, 1987). The entrenchment of Aboriginal language broadcasting rights in Canada's Broadcasting Act is seen by many as crucial for the effectiveness of Aboriginal broadcasting in the north. Attention is focused on broadcasting to the north of Canada because it is where most Native languages are still used--a major driving force behind policies urging support there. The CRTC announced its Aboriginal Broadcasting Policy in September 1990, based on a 1985 policy statement. The commission acknowledges that Aboriginal broadcasting in Canada has taken on a role similar to that of the CBC in delivering a first-level of service to communities, often in Native languages (Valaskakis, 1992, p. 79). However, following the 1993 cuts to the broadcasting access program, this rhetoric appears a little thin.

Discussion

The appropriation of a variety of media technologies by indigenous communities has profound implications for community broadcasting and cultural policy formation. This kind of appropriation demonstrates the possibility for empowerment inherent in these technologies. The technology itself is not a threat--it is how it is used which is at the centre of this discussion. It might be theorized in terms of media being enlisted as a cultural resource in "managing" society. Media takes its place alongside other cultural institutions like education, for example, but its pervasiveness gives it added emphasis. This theoretical concept, developed by Gramsci in his cultural writings (1988; Holub, 1992) and further expanded by Mercer (1989), is one I put forward as a guiding analytical framework here. It offers the possibility of indigenous media providing both cultural leadership and resistance to mainstream media informed essentially by non-indigenous ideologies. These forms of indigenous media represent a challenge to postmodernist notions that a system of social control and power is inherent in mass media, making exchange of information "impossible" (Baudrillard, 1988). Like other forms of indigenous media production under discussion here, the Tanami communities' involvement in cultural production is not merely self-serving. Although a primary driving force is the maintenance of local languages and culture, it also offers the possibility for co-productions which might herald a new era of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal co-operation. It represents another possibility for establishing a crucial cross-cultural dialogue (Langton, 1993).

Indigenous community responses will be variable, in keeping with existing cultural diversity. For example, urban-based indigenous communities in Australia and Canada have readily adopted technologies like print and radio as being more appropriate to their cultural needs. Interactive television may suit the Warlpiri in central Australia, but the pan-northern concept of Television Northern Canada seems to have been welcomed by indigenous communities across the north. This is possibly because the Native communication associations effectively "own" TVNC, not the other way around. This has created a flexible system whereby cultural mores find their way into programs being made in different regions of the north. One Dene viewer, for example, remarked that seeing how the Cree prepared their animal skins gave his people not only new ideas, but also highlighted the cultural differences which exist between Native communities.

The form of indigenous media in Australia, as in Canada, is variable. Remote Aboriginal community produced videotapes in communities like Yuendumu and Ernabella typically feature long, uninterrupted shots of landscape, sometimes accompanied by appropriate traditional songs. In the same way, the more remote Inuit communities produce television which is "not so pacy" (Blandina Makkik, executive producer, Inuit Broadcasting Corporation, Iqaluit, personal communication, March 20, 1991), preferring to use long takes and natural sound in their program offerings. I am wary of making specific interpretations here, agreeing with Burnett (1990, p. 121) that Western cultural theory may well be inappropriate for such a task.

What is probably more significant is the way in which programs get made. Again, Michaels (1986) gives a lucid account of the social organization of the video production process at Yuendumu. In one well-publicized case, 27 Warlpiri--linked through kinship--were required to be present to legitimate the recounting of a particular story, even though only a handful actually appeared on camera. Other indigenous media producers argue that their cultural products--whether print, radio, or television--must be similarly authorized by the communities they serve, albeit in different ways (O'Regan, 1990). For example, one of the first questions addressed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Aboriginal Programs Unit when it was set up in 1987 was: "What is indigenous filmmaking?" As a result, the regular program produced by the unit, Blackout, features no presenters or narrators. Production methods demand community accountability and recognition of cultural protocols. This, according to Aboriginal producer Frances Peters (1994, p. 152), ensures its indigenousness. Canadian Peter Kulchyski (1989) describes this in terms of an absence of performers in Inuit television and the disappearance of the audience-producer barrier. Michaels, writing about indigenous production on the other side of the Pacific, suggested Aboriginal television reflected a "Brechtian violation of the audience-producer boundary" (Michaels, 1990, p. 25). It is this very process of production which ensures indigenous media programs ideally emerge from--and are thus part of--the social structure of the community. If they are not produced in this way, they cannot be said to be indigenous. Audience research in northern Canada suggests the extraordinary popularity and impact of Native programming. Michaels (1986) describes a similar response at Yuendumu. My own research in the Torres Strait, too, supports this notion (Meadows, 1995). Another interesting question arises here--how do indigenous audiences respond to their own media in juxtaposition with mainstream media? In central Australia, it appears that the two media forms are able to co-exist--relatively unproblematically--side by side (O'Regan, 1990, p. 80). And why not? Indigenous audiences, like audiences anywhere else, are active, able to discern "parallel voices" (Valaskakis, 1993).

O'Regan (1993, p. 236) reminds us that this diversity in indigenous broadcasting should be considered within three frameworks: the differences within television itself, indigenous community aspirations, and the influence of government policy. Indigenous television thus becomes the result of a negotiation by indigenous people of the very nature of the video-television industry and their relationship to policy and funding issues. This could mean that indigenous broadcasting in Australia may eventually occupy a space somewhere between the community and commercial broadcasting sectors as is the case in Canada and Aotearoa. Attacks made on the maintenance of Australian or Canadian program content, waged internationally at the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) negotiations, do not augur well for arguments pertaining to indigenous content. It means such discussions will need to be approached with vigour, especially as they must remain framed by ideas which recognize indigenous people's prior and continuing relationship to the land (and the sea) and the effects of dispossession. Omission of these and such critical elements as self-determination from the debate produces a lack of context upon which all reasonable argument must fail. As Marcia Langton eloquently puts it: "The notion of social justice appears to have become boring and has disappeared from the rhetoric. But this, like the consumption and reconsumption of all ideas and styles including all that is regarded as `the primitive,' is a symptom of postmodernism and economic rationalism" (1993, p. 84).

Continuing reduction in the Canadian government's commitment to Native media is an ominous sign for the 1990s as is the Australian government's tardy response thus far. For both countries, treatment of their Aboriginal communities seems almost certain to come under greater international scrutiny as the Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples unfolds.

Conclusion

Perceptions of the impact of television on indigenous communities in Australia and Canada vary, but there is an overriding sense that local aspirations are not included in mainstream television programming. It seems there is a great need to examine more creative policy options for using technology for indigenous empowerment. Media as an institution is a powerful cultural resource which is enlisted by the dominant culture to win consent for particular ideologies (Gramsci, 1988). But indigenous media, too, in their various forms, represent community cultural resources which have the potential not only to contribute to community management, but also to operate counter-hegemonically. Some communities, for example, may prefer to work with radio because of its simplicity and low cost whereas television production might be located in other communities which prefer to work in a visual medium and have resources to support this. Interactive television has proved to be more suitable for some remote communities in dealing with sensitive cultural concerns. Rather than imposing an all-encompassing "quick-fix" communication model on communities, negotiation would seem too crucial to ensure an outcome which is acceptable in social, cultural, and political terms. Policy is the driving force behind such decision-making and, as Langton (1993) suggests, policymaking needs to revive the notion of social justice.

The importance of maintaining indigenous languages and cultures should be the driving force behind all such activities. Although this is not evident in the new 1992 Australian Broadcasting Services Act, it was a focus in the development of the 1993 indigenous broadcasting policy in Australia. And it is enshrined in the 1991 Canadian Broadcasting Act. Policymakers in both countries need to take greater notice of the creative options emerging from indigenous communities. I suggest that the use of technologies like interactive television represents a significant innovation creating a new kind of culturally specific media which may well complement rather than replace existing broadcasting systems. The new territory of Nunavut, for example, might find a use for videoconferencing technology, especially if it pursues a decentralized power structure. The Warlpiri--through the Tanami Network--linked up with TVNC, early in 1995, showing what is already technologically possible. If such effective indigenous broadcasting models remain closely associated with the social structure of the communities they serve, then their potential to succeed would seem to be high. This incorporation into community social structure seems to be of paramount importance in "authorizing" indigenous media. It may represent a form of negotiated empowerment, but nevertheless it does enable varying degrees of access denied by conventional one-way broadcasting models.

Notes

1
Murray Island, or Mer as it known locally, is a tiny island perched at the top of the Great Barrier Reef in far north Queensland. It was the centre of an historic High Court decision in 1992 which effectively quashed the legal fiction of the Australian continent being terra nullius, an empty land. The decision, brought by five plaintiffs from Murray Island, established the concept of Native title which now forms the basis for legislation enabling some indigenous land claims and compensation in the form of a $1.2 billion social justice package.
2
There are an estimated 3,000 speakers of Kala Lagaw Ya and it is one of the few Australian languages in a healthy state.

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