American Indian Culture and Research Journal

“Sharing Our Stories with All Canadians” is the trumpeted motto of APTN, the world’s first Indigenous television station with a country-wide broadcast license and fully Aboriginal controlled. Their daily broadcast, and that of Aboriginal radio stations, is a daily act of decolonizing the mainstream media. This article will call attention to some aspects of the presentation of Aboriginal issues in Canada’s mainstream media and outline the concept of ‘decolonizing the media’ before briefly discussing the conditions and frameworks of Indigenous media creation. It will then present a closer look at APTN and the radio stations Native Communications Incorporation (NCI) in Winnipeg and the Wawatay Radio Network (WRN) in Sioux Lookout. All of these media institutions are working to reach Aboriginal people across Canada to meet their information and entertainment needs from within their cultures as well as to build bridges across cultures to find the necessary common ground between Aboriginal and mainstream Canada. The article will explore the politics of the three media institutions concerning their mandates and missions, structure and government, staff, finance and advertisement, their focus and program, acquisition, and broadcast language in order to see how they can decolonize the Canadian media