First Nations Innovation - Publications

Conference Papers and Proceedings
#11 (2009)

To read or download, click on the link in the reference.

Publication #11 2009, May - New Media and Self-Determination: Publicly Made and Accessible Video and Remote and Rural First Nation Communities

Reference: Hancock, B-R., and O'Donnell, S. (2009). New Media and Self-Determination: Publicly Made and Accessible Video and Remote and Rural First Nation Communities. Presented at the Canadian Communication Association Annual Conference (CCA 2009), Carleton University, Ottawa, May.

Abstract: This working paper explores the potential for New Media to provide a means for members of remote and rural First Nations communities to challenge problematic mainstream representations of First Nations identity. Video on public access sites such as YouTube and Google Video, as well as on websites that act as hubs for First Nations internet users in remote and rural areas, allow for the accumulation of a critical mass of videos, providing complex, contemporary, and fluid images that “speak” to one another across distance and time. Such an accumulation may provide the means for a social movement—the public dissemination of self-determined identities by members of remote and rural First Nations communities thus growing in power to become a counter-hegemonic practice that undermines the misrepresentations of First Nations culture and identities in mainstream Canadian media.