mediaINDIGENA

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  • mediaINDIGENA takes to the STREETZ

    mediaINDIGENA is pleased to announce a new partnership with STREETZ 104.7 FM — “Winnipeg’s Illest Urban” — a new and ground-breaking hip-hop/urban radio station “targeting Aboriginal youth and all youth who love Hip Hop music.” That mandate makes it the first of its kind in North America, if not the world. Concrete culture indeed!

    Every Tuesday at 1 pm ET (Noon CT), MI Editor Rick Harp will join THE WORD‘s Lady V (aka Vanda Fleury) to discuss the latest posts and conversations on our site. Not in Winnipeg? Luckily, STREETZ has a live audio stream: go to the site and look in the top left area for the “Online Streaming” button.

    As STREETZ is a station dedicated to youth, we at MI will do our best during the show to focus on issues and happenings of interest to their main audience. We also plan to include archived segments from the show on our site in case you miss a week. Tune in and let us know what you think!

  • “Kill Indians”: Grappling with Graffiti in Thunder Bay

    Some mighty disturbing sentiments greeted visitors to the downtown of Thunder Bay, Ontario this week, including this offensive phrase:

    The “Kill Indians” scrawl seen above was just one of many derogatory if not outright hateful messages spray-painted throughout high traffic areas in TB.

    According to the tbnewswatch.com, Nishnawbe-Aski Nation Grand Chief Stan Beardy says it’s not just First Nations who should be worried by the message:

    “Whenever there’s racism involving potential violence, I think we should all be concerned as a society.”

    The graffiti has people talking — at least online.  In the comments section of tbnewswatch.com, people weighed in on racism in Thunder Bay and Canada as a whole:

    “As a society we have become way to sensitive to name calling and idiotic behaviour.  Instead of making this a media sensationalized story how about we just paint over it/clean it up and move on with life?”

    “I’ve spent some time in some of the remote communities and have seen the same type of graffiti directed toward caucasion nurses and teachers.”

    “One hopes that the natives in this city do not believe this is the sentiment of the majority of non-natives. Don’t be discouraged. This loser is just that….a loser.”

    As I wonder what the majority of Thunder Bayers make of it all, meantime, I wish all graffiti couldn’t just be more like this:

    Inuktitut graffiti in Yellowknife, NWT: "Don't get angry"

    [ Upper image via tbnewswatch.com; lower image via nnsl.com ]

  • The Search for the World’s Best Indian Taco

    Behold…

    Same film, different trailer, much funnier…

    I’d seen the trailers online for a while now and always wondered what it was about.

    Image courtesy www.nativefilm.com

    It turns out that the short film (which sadly I cannot find online in its entirety) is the product of Creative Spirit, a Native American film project based in California.

    Based on the quality of the trailer itself, I’d say they’re doing pretty good work.

  • What Impact Did the Oka Crisis Have On You?


    mediaINDIGENA    ‘s own Waubgeshig Rice has a stellar piece in today’s Facts & Arguments section of the Globe about the 1990 Oka Crisis. (Although I’m frankly baffled, to put it charitably, by the accompanying picture.) In “Oka helped us find our voice,” Waub nails it when he writes: “We learned what it truly meant to be Aboriginal in this country because of what happened at Oka.”

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  • “The Real Oka” and Other Conspiracy Theories

    Masked men

    I read Doug George’s anti-warrior diatribe in Tuesday’s Montreal Gazette (“As I Saw It: The Real Oka Story,” July 13, 2010) with a mixture of shock, horror, and sadness — roughly in that order. It’s clear (to me, anyway) that he doesn’t know the real story at all.

    In fact, the only sentence I could trust in the entire piece was the first one because it applied perfectly to himself and his own writing:

    To understand the Oka crisis of 1990, we need to see beyond the hype, distortions and lies that have become the great Oka myth.

    First, Doug assumes to speak for the Mohawks at Kanehsatake. Then — although he likely hasn’t spoken to anyone who was there on July 11 for his piece, and has never been to Kanehsatake — he implies that people there didn’t have the presence of mind to act, make decisions, or stand up for themselves. That’s not the Kanehsatake I know.

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