The Impact Of Media On Indigenous Collective Action

There were many things that were hidden by the media, as they want to tell the story that will benefit them. There were a big media presence trying to get in the Kanesatake but alongside the media presence were many supporters from throughout Canada. The most angered people were in Quebec since the blockade affected them the most, local residents rallied up and started getting violent and throwing rocks at cars which contained mostly of women, young children and elders who tried to leave the reserve. Also, since people could not go support they ended up protesting across the country and had blockades in British Columbia and Ontario. In the end it made more Canadians realize what is going on with the indigenous people and their rights to land.

“Akwesasne: This is Indian Land” is a documentary film created in 1969 and it is about the confrontation between the Mohawk of the St. Regis Reservation and the police. The events take place on Mohawk land near Cornwall, Ontario on a bridge that connects Canada and the United States. There are many differences between the two forms of political power in the movie. One relates to state-centered institutions, which in this case are represented by the police and the political power that is enforced by the indigenous people.

One of the most contentious issues in Canada's history is that of the Metis. Some people feel this unique group of people does not deserve any sort of recognition, whereas others believe their unique history and culture is something to be recognized and cherished. The history of the Metis people is filled with struggle; not only struggles against other powers, but also a struggle for self-identification. Despite strong opposition, the Metis people of Canada have matured as a political force and have taken great strides towards being recognized as a unique people.

Although this course is about global women’s movements, the overall argument in which I intend on taking for the purpose of this book review is that besides women, First Nations men are also victims of oppression. In addition to oppression, first nations are often stereotyped by society. Rice’s book does a good job on reflecting this idea once again, through the use of first person point of view stories. It allows the reader to really understand how these stereotypes affect the everyday lives of First Nations people. Before getting into how stereotyping affects the lives of these people, we will begin with looking into oppression and how it relates to the textbook.

Throughout history, the Native people of North America and the Europeans have continually had arguments and disputes over land. To this day there are still issues trying to be resolved. Twenty years ago, the beginning of one of the most violent and intense land disputes in present day Canada occurred. This event is now referred to as the Oka Crisis, named after the town Oka in Quebec. This crisis caused a confrontation involving the Quebec provincial police, the Canadian armed forces and the Mohawk people.1 The stand that the Mohawk people took in the town of Oka became a major revelation for the aboriginal people spreading awareness of aboriginal rights across Canada.

The Mohawk that were protesting to protect their traditional land, were bombarded with thousands of aggressive army members. The peaceful standoff turned violent and bloody when the army made contact with the protesters. Both sides of the standoff would be faced with conflicting loyalties because of their culture and nationalities. The Mohawk would be conflicted between defending historical property or being nationalistic to Canada. In the same view, the army would want to follow orders but could be conflicting between standing up against fellow Canadians. The source shows the tension between the contending groups, but also shows how each party felt about the matter. Their faces show the pain that is felt because of the land claim. When the government made the choice to expand a golf course onto the Oka land, even after Mohawk people formed complaints, they were cutting all ties with the Aboriginal group and creating tension within a

For instance, in Canada, Native Canadians have seen first hand what oppression and mistreatment of women can look like. Since the European invasion, First Nations women and children have faced prolonged cruel treatment, by being forced on nearly uninhabitable reserves. For many years, the teaching of First Nation’s culture and languages was prohibited on reserves. Aboriginal youth must leave their families in order to get a proper secondary education, but generally want to come back to help with issues on reserve.4 Notwithstanding, their portrayal in the mainstream burdened the First Nation’s people significantly. The brutal depiction of First Nation people as “drunks” may have led to a decreased motivation to succeed, as well as difficulty in getting jobs.

Soren C. Larson writes the second article, titled, Promoting Aboriginal Territoriality Through Interethnic Alliances: The Case of the Cheslatta T’en in Northern British Columbia. Larson worked for five years from 1998 to 2002 conducting ethnographic research on the Cheslatta T’en tribe in northern British Columbia. He conducted 82 formal interviews between himself and tribal as well as non-tribal members alike, as well as becoming integrated with the aboriginal

In April 1995 Pamela George, an Ojibway women, was brutally murdered in Saskatchewan. Her murderers Steven Kummerfield and Alex Ternowetsky, young middle-class white men, were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to merely six and a half years in prison. George’s story is one of the many Indigenous women who have been murdered or missing over the past years. There are over 580 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women, close to half are put aside and left unsolved. Only 53% of these cases have lead to charges of homicide (Klement 8). Drastically, statistics indicate that Aboriginals are faced with more hardships throughout their life compared to the average Canadian. Indigenous groups, particularly women, suffer from a lower rate of education, higher suicide rates and an array of health risks. This paper will examine the role settler colonization history has played in perpetuating conditions for violence to indigenous women, many of which are still experienced today. This will be accomplished by first assessing the history of settler colonization and its negative repercussions. Secondly, it will use Sherene Razak’s concept of “spatial segregation,” to illustrate how state institutions have facilitated violence through space, race and the law. Lastly, this paper will use evidence from the film “Finding Dawn” to further demonstrate how violence towards indigenous women is institutionally produced.

The issue of violence against Aboriginal women is my chosen subtopic that strongly contributes to the history of Aboriginal women’s struggle for rights and identity in Canada. To search relevant newspaper articles for this topic, the databases that were used were Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe, as well as Canadian Newsstand Major Dailies. The reason these two databases were chosen was because Canadian Newsstand offered articles from multiple newspapers in the country, therefore providing me with diverse news in different provinces other than Ontario. The article I obtained from Canadian Newsstand was Canada Called on to Stop Violence Against Aboriginal Women from the Leader Post newspaper in Saskatchewan. Lexis Nexus provided one article I

The Canadian government was being deceitful towards the Mohawk peoples; they ignored their claims to the land and decided to build anyway. This was unjust act was bound to be followed by retaliation. Even after the crisis ended in September of 1990, one of the non-aboriginal locals stoned 75 cars that had aboriginal women, children, and elderly inside. This shows the hatred and disrespect for people who were just defending what was rightfully theirs. Cases like this one help to make Canadian's more aware of the current situation with the First Nations. It shows them how the government is and has been failing to treat the First Nations people fairly when it comes to their rights to the land.

Particularly in conflict situations where there are indigenous activists and stakeholders there are often profound differences in belief and ways of viewing the conflict situation by virtue of different cosmologies and schemas for relating to the natural world. Similarly, under these conditions the barriers to conciliation based on a history of oppression and exploitation must be respected and strategies for facilitating productive dialogue would need to be established. In order to address some of the ways in which the law, environment and the rights of First Nations people intersect, it is essential to begin by examining the colonial mindset and to contrast this framework with the attitudes towards and ways of interacting with the natural

Marisol de la Cadena argued that Latin America's turn to the Left away from neoliberalism in the past few years has been in part due to the revival of indigenous movements (indigenismo) in the Andean countries of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. Modern politics on the Left can accommodate these movements when they are concerned with capitalist exploitation, protection of the environment, cultural autonomy and land reform, although it shares the same modernist and rationalist assumptions as the liberals and supporters of free trade and laissez faire capitalism. If modernity as defined by John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim means science, technology, industry and urbanization, with human beings removed from the state of nature, then there is hardly any room at the table for belief in earth spirits, sacred mountains an invisible sky and water gods. Most modernist thinkers have rejected such beliefs as 'primitive', 'backward' and unscientific, a relic of the past, although relativists and cultural realists like Clifford Geertz have always been able to accept cultures and ways of life on their own terms rather than trying to fit them into rigid laws and frameworks of social and economic development. Even Durkheim and Marx, who regarded urban, industrial capitalism as producing a society of anomie, alienation and isolated individuals did not advocate a return to traditional religion or the feudal or tribal past, but instead for progress toward socialism or

Each individual makes up the society as it is, and various characteristics and beliefs makes up an individual. Although, individual lives together with a variety of personal ideologies, emotions, cultures, and rituals, they all differentiate one person from the other making up one’s own identity. This identity makes up who one is inside and out, their behaviour, actions, and words comes from their own practices and values. However, the profound history of Indigenous people raises question in the present about their identities. Who are they really? Do we as the non-native people judge them from the outside or the inside? Regardless of whether the society or the government were involved in their lives, they faced discrimination in every

It is essential in an increasingly globalised world, to have a deep understanding of nation-states, political and economic institutions that govern, and the cultural backgrounds and values of its citizens. My interest in sociology has thus far entailed studying of the indigenous communities of Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh. For my MA thesis, I propose to study the media representation of the collective action by the Indigenous nationalism against the backdrop of Bengali nationalism in CHT.