ADRIANNE XAVIER: Thank you so much, it's so great to see so many people here to listen to the words that have already
come already, and I'm very much excited to hear what's coming next. To that end i'm really not going to keep you for long.
Jesse Wente,
broadcaster, curator, producer, activist, obviously a public speaker. I'm really excited to hear this, so I don't want to keep you.
Welcome to this week, and please, Jesse, take it away.
Thank you so much, on behalf of indigenous studies.
JESSE WENTE: Well, thank you very much, Adrianne. And look at all you wonderful people all here, isn't this delightful.
As it's been suggested, my name is Jesse Wente, I'm Anishinaabe, Ojibwe. I was born in Toronto. My family-
my dad's side of the family comes from a small place called Chicago, and my mom's side of the family comes from
a metropolis known as the Serpent River First Nation.
Which is also named Kenabutch.
On the north shore of Lake Huron, on where my ancestors have been for, you know, a while - and still are. Still lots of family there
I'm Bear Clan and I'm really delighted
to be here. In terms of my professional existence, I guess what's relevant is I'm the Executive Director of the Indigenous Screen Office, a
and I'm also Chair of the Canada Council for the Arts.
And I'm going to talk today about what we've heard mentioned already, of sovereignty, food sovereignty,
sovereignty sovereignty. I'm going to talk about narrative sovereignty. They're all interrelated.
And I'm going to talk about that as really the policy
the baseline of the policy that the ISO tends to advocate for, and the reason why the ISO exists is as a sovereignty based organization,
and just by way of introduction because people don't know what the Indigenous Screen Office actually is,
it was established in 2017 by the Federal heritage Minister.
It was - this came after a couple of solid decades of advocacy on the part of Indigenous screen storytellers in Canada for
the founding of the office.
The advocacy started roughly the day after Australia announced that they were establishing an Indigenous Screen Office,
which was about 25 years or so ago. There were numerous reports over the years that called for -
they didn't necessarily name the Indigenous Screen Office a name, although the most recent one did, what they tended to
call for was increased resources for Indigenous storytellers that were to be administered by Indigenous people for Indigenous people.
And then - and most recently the CMF report in 2016 called for the founding of the screen office, and that is what
the Federal Government was responding to. I came on as the first employee in 2018.
And if you just saw the recent federal budget, in 2021 we were allocated $40 million over three years to continue our work,
supporting Indigenous screen storytellers and the pursuit of our narrative sovereignty within the Canadian screen sector.
So what we mean by -
Well, first of all, why narrative sovereignty? And I think it's - this is a certainly a key question that we are often asked.
And the answer is simple, which is that Indigenous peoples, First Nations, Metis, and Inuit peoples are not
equity-seeking groups in the way that we often hear about in
in equity work, as it defined. We're sovereignty seeking groups, and this is a very different position in terms of seeking
solutions that may look like equity, but actually are a form around sovereignty and, of course, the reason why
Indigenous peoples are sovereignty seeking is that well, we were sovereign nations before Canada,
that never actually stopped, we never ceded sovereignty in any of the agreements with Canada, including all the historical treaties.
So we are still sovereign nations ,just under the occupation of a settler-colonial state, so we seek sovereignty just as in all aspects,
food, politics, personal, political, and narrative.
And, you know, there's a legal framework for this, because Indigenous peoples, First Nations people, are in the
Constitution in section 35, as founding nations of
Canada, that allows us a legal framework with which to advocate for sovereignty, since we see it, as i'll get into,
we see that, actually, Canada is very, very, very familiar with the concept of narrative sovereignty, because it has lots of
laws and policies to make sure that it has its own. And we can get into that in a second. So,
This is why we ultimately argue from a novereignty or advocate from that sovereignty framework when it comes to
storytelling and the resources that should be available and how those should be allocated.
And where we specifically mean by narrative sovereignty, is we mean measures of control.
So we're talking about in the way the screen sector has defined, it is very right along the same lines, is how Canadians defines
it's own narrative sovereignty in the screen space, which is around ownership of underlying IP and the production rights
and then creative control.
So basically, who owns the story and who is telling the story in order to be qualified as Canadian, those people have to be
Canadian. And then you can access the Canadian funding system.
Ultimately narrative sovereignty is extraordinarily important to settler-colonial states, as it is among the
largest measures of actual sovereignty that they control, along with the ongoing occupation of the lengths,
and what I mean is that you know Canada,
has always been very conscious of enforcing its own narrative sovereignty as part of ongoing colonialism in this land,
that it is the storytelling that Canada does about itself that helps the
notion of its sovereignty, that and the occupation of the lands are actually its primary forces of how it reinforces that and then
through the courts.
We know the importance of this, not only because Canada is so protective of its own narrative sovereignty,
but Indigenous peoples are incredibly familiar with the importance of this idea because of how our narrative sovereignty
has been systematically attacked and stripped from us by the Canadian state over the years.
And how did Canada do this? Well, I mean it was actually in all the ways people already know of our sovereignty
was our lost. Residential schools obviously, and attacking language, and distancing from family, meant stories were disrupted
and the national stories of the our nation's were interrupted and and attacked.
We know, through the Indian Act that attacks on our land and our identity
also undermined our abilities to tell our national stories because, of course, you know the key to underline why there is narrative sovereignty,
to begin with, is that nations always have a story to tell about themselves, right, they all have a creation story.
The Anishinaabe, my people have a creation story it's why Turtle Island, that's why we call this place Turtle Island - is our
creation story and Canada has one as well.
Which, you know, is depending on your point of view about as, you know,
historically and scientifically accurate, as the notion of an enormous turtle, you know, being underneath all the land.
I actually put a lot more faith in the turtle being there frankly.
But there just isn't the same that in national narrative building, when we build stories around nations, they are a mixture of
myths and fact. And that we have to discern which is which
if we're going to set a policy. And so Canada is always very sure to insist on its own narratives sovereignty, and we know,
that they made sure to limit it for First Nations, Metis, and Inuit people here, perhaps the most obvious attack on this
was the famous Potlatch Ban that was instituted in 1884 and lasted until 1951 here in Canada.
If you're unfamiliar with what this law was, is that it's a name Potlatch after a very specific ceremony
that takes place among many of the West Coast nations here in Turtle Island, although it wasn't exclusive to the Potlatch,
banned pretty much any ceremony that Indigenous people would want to have.
Our stories are embedded in the ceremonies, they're an act of storytelling of that sort of narrative nationhood that we've talked about.
And if you think of the stretch from 1884 to 1951, not only does this stretch encompass the
height, the peak of the residential school system so while culture is actually outlawed in our nation's because this is what the Potlatch ban
effectively did, it made it illegal for us to perform our ceremonies in our own communities,
and in fact, made it illegal even for us to have our own ceremonial artifacts, which is why those were then taken
and placed in museums all around the world, including in Canada, and contextualized by non-indigenous people
for a non-indigenous audience.
And this was also the time period that most of the major Canadian cultural institutions and, indeed, the foundation of
Canadian Cultural Policy was, in fact, enacted.
So, if you think of, I don't know, pretty much any major museum or art gallery in Canada, you know, the oldest ones, they all
date back to about this period.
If you think of the CBC or national film board they were all founded during this period when, again,
it was literally illegal for Indigenous people to tell stories in our communities, the only legal place for Indigenous people to do
that was for non indigenous audiences or by non indigenous people.
The Canada Council for the Arts is another example of a narrative sovereignty institute, Canadian narrative sovereignty institution
was founded, just after the Potlatch ban ended, so it was founded in 1957, but to give you the idea
of what it meant when the Canada Council was founded in 1957, Indigenous Arts were ineligible for funding.
So our stories were not eligible, Indigenous artists were eligible if they wanted to participate in a colonial or Western art form.
So if you wanted to be a traditional ballet dancer or a cellist playing European music, then you might qualify, but if you wanted
to do anything that was traditional to us, traditional art practice for us, it was ineligible.
And it was during this time, of course, that Canada was at its peak in terms of helping to establish its own
narrative sovereignty infrastructure, that's all the institutions that we see.
And we know that colonial states are very protectionist of their own narrative sovereignty, we see this, not just in Canada,
but, you know, all over France, England - they all have similar policies, they all tend to congregate around issues of ownership
and creative control, they're all meant to protect the the native industries agianst the global
you know, industry that the streamers, by the way -because I will eventually get to the streaming folks - the streamers represent
the sort of most peak form of at the current moment.
But the same reasons why Canadian has Cultural Policy, right. Canada developed cultural policy, a) to distance itself somewhat
from it's colonial parent state, and also to be protectionist against what it felt was the largest threat, the sort of cultural industry or
industrial production that we see south of the border in the US.
So while colonial states are very good at protecting their own narrative sovereignty, they have quite done the opposite for
Indigenous nations, they have actually quite - they have passed policy to undermine and threaten our own narrative sovereignty,
in part because they're, you know - colonial states in general view any Indigenous sovereignty movement
whether its narrative, food any of them as threatening to their own sovereignty.
It, of course, is the exact opposite, but that is part of the the framework that we have to exist in.
Now, one of the reasons that the ISO is interested in narrative sovereignty, well there's many reasons, that we can get into
I mean some of it is
that these are - there's a history, you know, in the film industry or the TV industry, you know, Indigenous peoples are
among the most portrayed
communities in the history of the moving image, yet the vast majority and by vast, I mean in the 99th percentile
of those were not created by Indigenous people. So when it comes to this specific sector, and this would also be true
of our portrayals in pretty much any other sector,
although I'm not as versed in theatrical or dance history, maybe Santee would know better, but I'm not as versed in those,
I do know that in film history this is very, very true.
And, you know, that we have suffered the consequences of that, you know, that our stories not being told by us has undermined
our actual sovereignty, has undermined our efforts to retain
and maybe bring back our own sovereignty, it's undermined our physical health, it's undermined our safety on these nations, it's been
used to dehumanize us, which allows for some of the gross disparities in a lot of health and social justice outcomes that we see.
You know, it's, not to say, the fact that we've lost narrative sovereignty is why we have persistent disparities and say,
access to drinking water in Canada, or the prison system.
But, the fact that we haven't been able to tell our stories is part and parcel and why we have been so easily dehumanized in
colonial States, as part of the necessity of colonial states to do that in order to excuse their their history and create their own narrative.
They need to obscure that history and that narrative.
And it's just been incredibly damaging, and while the-
while the retention or regaining of narrative sovereignty for Indigenous people won't resolve all of those issues,
it will allow us on a pathway to, because it will allow us to be humanized in a way that it
it should make these disparities even more grotesque and harder for the general public to allow by their political parties.
So, the key part of narrative sovereignty is that it will allow us to humanize and this is good, not just for us, but also frankly, for Canada.
And, you know, this is the part that I think is really important to understand.
So when I talked a little bit about why the ISO is interested in their sovereign - why Indigenous people's narrative sovereignty,
there's a few reasons.
As we've seen, just in this past I don't know a couple of years, especially maybe in the pandemic, the appetite
for moving image content does not go down.
It's been on a pretty steady trajectory up since,I don't know, Edison first showed moving images in 1894. It's been a steady increase
in human interest in moving images and, in fact, we're at a point now where there's more moving image content created and consumed
on the planet than at any other point in human history. So there's a vast industrialization that is occurring,
and rightfully so, Indigenous peoples want to make sure that we have access to that industry,
to, for a number of reasons, one it presents economic opportunity that does not require the same sort of
environmental devastation or environmental compromise, shall we put it more politely, perhaps,
that many of the other extractionist resources have demanded when we see them emerge or take root on our lands,
so I think there's an opportunity there for participation in that industry, that is a growth industry,
for Indigenous peoples that has a lot of benefits, both in terms of our humanization and our ability to have narrative sovereignty,
but also economic, in nature, environmental, possibly in nature.
But, I would be, you know -
I've never seen storytelling as a purely economic or industrial comparative.
I might, in fact, argue that economics have tended to undermine and create more problems as storytelling than they have
actually resolved anything. And storytelling as an industry has been remarkably resilient,
to all manner of disruption, whether it be
changes, technological advancement, changes in population, or as we've just seen in the last year, changes in how we communicate and
how we behave. It's not like a COVID has made storytelling less valuable,
In fact, it's made it more valuable, it's more valuable than ever that we connect and we tell these stories; has changed the mode
Perhaps, but it hasn't changed the underlying - the inherent value of storytelling, and I mean beyond, sort of, any economic
measure. And so, when I think of the real point of narrative sovereignty for Indigenous peoples,
frankly it's the same as sovereignty for Indigenous peoples, and these are interrelated, I don't see how
we will gain our sovereign - our political and physical sovereignty, without having narrative sovereignty. And I don't
see how we'll have narrative sovereignty, if we aren't also fighting for our political and physical
sovereignty on these lands. But that this is in fact not at all a threat to Canadian sovereignty which seems like an odd trick but it isn't.
That, in fact, for Canada to reach its sort of ideal state, as a state,
is in recognition of Indigenous sovereignty, that it's in the creation of a sort of new partnership that is required in order for
candidates to secure its own sovereignty, is actually a pathway through the recognition of our own.
And so,
Because I think the end that we're often seeking is not as policy-driven as perhaps this conference,
would want or as often I couch my language in. Because the goals I have are not, you know,
I'm happy to discuss policy if they're, you know, to advance a specific goal, and the goal is I want Canada
to be a safer and better place for Indigenous folks to continue to exist since we're unlikely to go anywhere.
And since it's unlikely - well we haven't gone anywhere, like in thousands of years, so I mean if we're going to go on history,
seems like we're here to stay. And everyone else is also here, and again, our ancestors welcomed this. So you know, in keeping with that,
we have to figure out how to make this work better and so,
I do think the national narrative, the story that Canada tells itself has to fundamentally change.
And the fundamental part that has to change about it, is how it understands its ongoing relationship with First Nations,
Metis, and Inuit people. And for that narrative to change, it requires us to start telling this story.
Canada has told it's story over and over again, it's been taught in classrooms for generations,
it has led us to the point where we have to have these conversations today. So I think it is important that we acknowledge them, maybe
we need to shift the story we tell about ourselves if we want outcomes to fundamentally
change. And so really that's at the core of what,
at least, my work is doing, and how I see my work at the ISO is that it's an out of an interest to see Canada be a better
place. As much as Canada has harmed my family and my peoples,
my family also imagined that Canada could be a place where our communities lived in right relations with one another,
so I don't want to do disservice to that vision either,
by giving up entirely on the state of Canada. But I think the state of Canada requires to do some pretty heavy lifting
if it wants to set those relations back into a right place.
So in terms of how we see this narrative sovereignty present itself in legislation, it's interesting to consider.
You know, one small measure we saw in the changes to the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Act that had been proposed
by the government, if you're familiar with the
act, the last time it was amended there was language added around Indigenous broadcasting and Indigenous storytelling,
And the language, I think, was meant to be inclusive. The language is basically that there should be
Aboriginal broadcasting "when resources become available". I have this qualifier that occurred, right after when I -
Oh, by the way, I'm the one doing the quotation mark it wasn't like that in the act they didn't have the quotation mark -
But they said when resources became available. Well, I mean,
spoiler alert, they never became available.
So, the closest we got was the founding of APTN, about 21 years or so ago. APTN was founded by the CRTC, it's important to keep in mind,
it was actually the CRTC that helped create it after much advocacy from the Community for there to be an Indigenous network.
And other than that, we've seen incremental resources become available really just in the last six or seven years, both at the main
funding bodies for audiovisual content that would be telefilm and the CMF. We really haven't seen a coherent Indigenous strategy by
the CBC, which is the single largest narrative Canadian narrative sovereignty entity that they created.
And the NFB does have a stated Indigenous strategy that they are working through. So very minor, with the whole "when resources
became available" thing, you know, I'm going to be generous, because I
was not, I must admit, when this was created in 1990 or 91, I would have been, you know, in high school,
I wasn't really paying attention to Broadcasting Policy in Canada at the time.
So, I'm going to be generous and say that they didn't mean it to mean that, you know, that resources would never become available,
they were still going to be optimistic there, but in function, it meant that resources never became available, so there was no
compulsion for the creation of an Indigenous Broadcasting sector.
That language has been dropped from the most recent proposed amendments, this was certainly what the ISO in our community
was advocating for, that the language be dropped, which would mean, suddenly, that
the Broadcasting Act is now compelling there to be Indigenous Broadcast sector in a way that it wasn't before, because it's saying
very much like that says, not quite as close as we would like, but very similar in the way it says that there should be a French and English
broadcast sector, now it sort of similarly says there should be an Indigenous one.
That law is what has allowed us to have the Canadian Media Fund, to have Telefilm, to have these funding bodies which exists to fulfill
the requirements that exist under the Broadcasting Act for the
broadcaster's. So this was, you know as -
how would I put it, how can I put this politely.
As complex, is how I'll put it, as the proposed amendments are and their long term
impacts on our sector. Because I'm sure that's something you folks will get into in this conference later.
That particular change we're certainly all in supportive of, we think that will mean that
broadcasters will have to have an Indigenous component or Indigenous storytelling in order to exist in Canada, this is good, this is what helps
form an actual sector to exist.
And when it comes to the age of streamers, because I realized I need to get to that,
I think it's interesting to consider the proposition of narrative sovereignty in an age of streaming services that exist on a global level,
not necessarily on a national level and even if you take this just strictly out of moving image content, and just think of cultural
policy in the age of sort of global
cultural entities, like the streaming services,
I think it actually behooves all countries, all nations, including First Nations, Metis, and Inuit nations.
To think that this actually requires even more support for
national storytelling and support for national storytelling services, not less, and that there's a couple of reasons for this.
One, global streamers have shown to have a ravenous appetite, not dissimilar to their extractionist colleagues and other major industries,
You know, they -
You know, let's be honest, I mean they will buy everything and they're not really that interested in preservation of existing ecosystems or
business models, they're interested in complete dominance.
And not just of - certainly for some of them - not just of the content we consume. Some of them are interested in dominance over, you know,
most of our interactions with the digital world. If you think of vertically integrated companies like Amazon or Facebook or in Google,
they're not just interested in you streaming the latest show, they're interested in mitigating your entire interactions through the Internet.
You know, they want the Internet of Google, the Internet of Amazon, where everything you do is strictly
Through their service. And I think it's actually incredibly important that countries like Canada actually see that and
and respond to that threat by investing in our own infrastructure and our own ability to create our own stories.
Now the interesting thing is that we can take advantage of
audience behavior on a lot of these streaming services, which is, you know, there's been a lot of discussion - that I'm going to drift
off of the content production just for a second - but there's a lot of discussion in our sector around, you know,
making content, globalizing your content.
The example everyone loves to use, because everyone knows these movies, even though I will admit to not really watching them,
which is the Fast and the Furious movies, so people who've seen them will smile and know what I'm talking about
I haven't really, you know I'm no longer paid film critic so I -
Movies, that I don't want to see, and no longer get paid to see, I skip, and so I haven't really seen the Fast and Furious movies,
but they're made in this sort of global marketplace so they want to sell through to China, as well as America, as well as
every human being, they want to stream these movies.
So they don't really have any nationality, other than being capitalist. That's perhaps the closest to their national identity those those films ultimately get.
But if you actually look at what shows are most successful, what shows break through, those are hugely successful in a specific model,
but a lot of it - of the shows that are actually very successful are extremely culturally specific. They're not global in their presentation,
they're actually very local in their presentation.
But of course, the trick is, and we've always known this about storytelling, is that the very local is actually ubiquitous among humanity.
The small things that we think of as "local concerns"? Everyone has that.
We all share these small little things. So when you make a show that is actually specific - look at Kim's Convenience, just as an example
of a show that's done extremely well.
Again that's because that corner store exists everywhere. Interactions that people can relate to exist anywhere.
So this is why, actually, I'm urging or I would continue to urge our government to invest in cultural creation
from a Canadian, from a First Nations, Metis, and Inuit. And indeed from all of what "Canadian" should represent, which is
a whole lot of different communities and cultures.
And lean into that specificity, lean into the idea of Canadian content, because it's Canadian,
and trust that our experiences are not so dissimilar from the other peoples in the worlds. That these can travel
and we see that they are, whether it's Letterkenney. We have the ability to make content that succeeds on the global level by taking
advantage of what's specific about Canadian. And again, this would lead me back to the importance of allowing Indigenous storytellers
to have their own narrative sovereignty, to have creative sovereignty over how they tell their stories,
because when we think about what is culturally specific to Canada, well,
If I think of cultures that say, you can only find on Turtle Island, well, that's the First Nations, Metis, and Inuit folks.
Right, those are the cultures that are actually distinct to this place, right. That you don't have
in other parts of the global community. And yet those stories are also an untapped resource, because they have been suppressed for so long.
So we have this incredibly rich storytelling history that is largely -
I'll use big square quotes for this, because colonial folks, (inaudible), stories that are "undiscovered" by colonial nations,
because they haven't heard them before.
We should be empowered to now bring these forth, not just because it's interesting. Entering the economy allows us to tap
into an industry, all of that is hugely beneficial and we should, but also, quite frankly, because it's time for these stories
to surface. We are looking at, you know, a lot of challenges in our relationship with each other, relationships with the Earth, that
these stories can help center, and if we listen to them and understand them, and allow Indigenous peoples to tell them in their way,
as often for ourselves as much as anyone else, that these are incredibly important stories.
And that these stories can help re-shif how we view our relationships with each other and the systems that support
human existence on the planet. The ad that this is actually the, perhaps, the most urgent thing for us right now, we're in the midst of a pandemic.
Our systems did not react well to it.
So, what are we going to do about it? What is the story we're going to tell? That we need to reform and rebuild systems that didn't work?
Or should we tell different stories to try to create new systems that will actually respond, so that there is equity when these crisis
occurr, because there will be other crisis. We are in several ongoing crisis,
even before the pandemic ever hit. All the pandemic has done is reassert the need for these movements to occur,
and for a fundamental storytelling change to take place to allow us the space in our imaginations
to picture new policy solutions and new policy outcomes and to imagine that we're not beholden
to the same systems that have led us to have to seek the same policy initiatives and outcomes. It's bananas to me that
sometimes we think "Oh this, led us here, let's use it to get back out!"
I'm not sure, it's a bit like climbing up a very slick slide once you've gone down. It can be - that doesn't mean you can't do it,
it's just the latter might be the better way to get out of the same position. And so, ultimately, I think,
narrative sovereignty of course is central to
the ongoing struggle for sovereignty for Indigenous peoples, but I actually think in the age of the streamers, it has become an
incredibly important consideration, even for,
The colonial states who have done such a job at undermining Indigenous narrative sovereignty in favor of their own.
Because a global marketplace - one driven largely by capitalist centered algorithms -
does not really care about the borders that colonial nation-states erected for themselves, they are the, you know,
famously that the head of the CBC once compared Netflix to I think French imperialism in India, which is a terrible,
terrible comment, but I think what it underlines, is that colonial nation states, the thing they fear the most is to be colonized.
One only needs to read their own stories to understand how deeply they fear having done to them what they have done to others,
watch any movie about an alien invasion - that's what it's literally about.
And so, they fear this same framework without seeing the opportunity of being specific about our own place on the planet and
how that can feed in and not be as terrified about global networks,
when what we are feeding them is specific content to the places that we reside, so resisting the temptation to meet a global marketplace
with global created content and instead meet that marketplace with local community-based
content as a way to - and I hate using content - stories, can we just say stories? That's way better, content is awful.
When when we meet, you know, so in other words use their- what the systems they've created, but not to their ends, to our own end.
The streamers ultimately will do what is profitable, what garner's audience, and that doesn't have to be stuff that is non-specific,
it can be stuff that is very specific and I think that's what we
should be leaning into, our cultural policy should be about creating more of it, allowing more self-determination for
Indigenous peoples, making sure that more communities are present.
Because again, if we allow for diverse communities and Canadian content, that will be more reflective of the global marketplace
we're talking about. So that will actually bring them to our own stories in a way that just clinging to
this sort of algorithmic production designs, I don't think ultimately will. So in this way and the narrative sovereignty is actually
become a common cause for many of us.
And central to how Canada can secure a zone is a) making sure that Indigenous peoples have ours,
again, these are complimentary things, and that will,
indeed, allow Canada to then serve its own in a much more forceful way on the global marketplace in the face of these emerging
cultural giants and streaming services.
I'm going to stop there, because I think we're supposed to take Q&A, and I have rambled long enough,
but miigwech, miigwech, miigwech chi-miigwech for listening.
SARA BANNERMAN: Thank you so much Jesse for that wonderful wonderful talk.
It's just so interesting to hear you talk about the Indigenous Screen Office and Indigenous narrative sovereignty
and the importance of that within the big picture of the complex of stories.
And the history of Canadian storytelling sovereignty within that. I want to invite everyone to put their questions and comments in the chat.
And, and while we're waiting for people to do that, I just - I have something that really, kind of, struck me about
your talk that I just wanted to reflect what I mean.
I mean, first of all, just to highlight what you said and what I appreciated; all the communication and cultural policies that, you know,
this conference deals with, were really founded in a time and are tied to Indigenous cultural genocide,
and white supremacy, and have a history of that that needs to be reckoned with.
And I think
one of the things that - a concept that interests me is the concept of sovereignty and also relational sovereignty.
And to me, like, reflecting on that idea in the context of what you've said.
It seems to me that there's moments, and maybe the pandemic is one of them, that really exposes the extent to which
the State does not necessarily work for Indigenous people, or work for us, whoever us is.
And as you mentioned, sovereignty comes really from relationships, it comes from accenting to this organization that we're all part of.
And you mentioned the role of stories in that and my kind of thought on that is that stories can do multiple things. Stories, on the one hand,
can make us feel good about terrible, you know, relational structures. They can give us false ideas of things and create false legitimacy.
But what it sounds like you're suggesting is that stories can also change things, because they can almost make a new demand,
they can humanize, they can kind of change the policy paradigm that we're working in.
And so maybe i'll just ask for you to, maybe, reflect a little bit on those ideas and we'll watch for other comments coming in
in the chat - and questions.
Yeah, thank you so much, Sara. I mean, yeah, I think storytelling changes.
I think storytelling is all about change, or that it is - and you're right in that it can both be
used. It;s a tool, right, so it can be used for both good and bad. And humans use it all the time.
Storytelling is a distinctly human thing, it's when we are the storytelling animal,
that is how we understand the whole world, is through storytelling. Yes we now - we do science and all sorts of things,
but what's the way we often communicate, even those scientific discoveries. We tell a story about them, because that's actually
how our brain works. It's much easier for us to understand these concepts
when we just tell a story of them. And you know, when I think about, you know, someone mentioned Truth and Reconciliation,
and, you know, what is the main central proposal of a Truth and Reconciliation process, it's about storytelling .
Asking, the truth part, is about asking people to tell their story. Typically the reason you're asking for it in the context of a
Truth and Reconciliation process is because that story has been expressly suppressed or oppressed or excluded or erased.
So you have to have a specific process to even get those stories, but if you look at what the intent is then, well the intent is, we hear
those stories and we change.
We change through reconciliation, through reparations that should be, you know, we don't often talk about reparations, but they s
should be in direct connection to reconciliation.
You know, as an outcome or output of reconciliation. So yes, we've engaged in it expressly I - you know, one of the things pre-pandemic
and even now, during the pandemic - although now we do this - is, you know, I toured the country talking with folks,
and what was one of the most common things Canadians would say to me was "I didn't know this".
So, what they're saying is they hadn't heard that story.
Right. They didn't know what the story was. And the reason they were telling me this, is because they were reflecting it now
they had heard that story, they thought differently. They saw the world differently.
And seeing the world differently might mean they change. And listen, maybe it's naive for me to think that storytelling can help Canada change.
Because, maybe you know.
I want to be super optimistic and everything, but you know, Canada is proven to be very resilient to change or resistance to change.
Even during a Truth and Reconciliation process, it has proven to be very resistant to those ideas.
But, stories that I had, stories I work with, stories what I love and how I understand the world, is what I'm passionate about.
So that's the arena I work in, and I see the connections between how storytelling has been weaponized against us
about how the denial of our stories has been used to create false ones, right.
To ease these things, and that's where I want to then have the fight. Is in the arena of stories, that's when I feel equipped.
To fight with my sister who's a writer, you know, a lawyer, treaty rights lawyer. She fights with laws, and their own laws.
We all have our own, sort of, place to try to advance the
frankly, the health of our people, and this is
this is where I am. But I think it's - absolutely stories have a huge impact . All we have to do is look at how storytelling has affected how we perceive the pandemic.
And how it shifts the storytelling, and all this - cause confusion or anxiety or poor outcomes or like and - granted, it's a story that is changing.
Jesse: So the story about it is naturally going to change over time.
But this conflict has exacerbated many things and maybe also, to your point Sara, we live in a time where storytelling
the amount of it is unbelievable, and not all of it, you know,
much of it is being weaponized, it is being used for
other outcomes that actually are not sovereignty at all, and we have to be very conscious of that, and to me the answer to that
isn't less storytelling, it's more.
SARA BANNERMAN: We do have a few questions. Thank you so much, we do have a few questions that have
come in in the chat so i'm just gonna speak them out.
A series of questions and I'll let you pick out of those which ones you're sort of ready to respond to.
One is that: I've heard ideas about an Indigenous Internet what does that mean to you, and what would it look like?
Another question is: what are your thoughts about how communications folks can reconcile and expand their roles as
Indigenous allies, in the context of anti-indigenous racism and indigenounizing the Academy?
How can they move beyond kind of risk and reputation management?
Another is, and there's two here, I think, relating to Bill-C10:
Should we require the foreign streamers to offer our specific stories as in Bill C-10, or should we seek to develop our own services?
Thank you for your thoughts as well, there's a comment on equity and inclusion versus sovereignty and self-determining.
That's an important message that needs to be carried.
Another question - stop me of this too many all at once, I'll read you one more.
Thank you for your elegant argument, Jesse, I love your proposal to fund local Indigenous stories for their unique and universal,
accessible stories to hack the globalist media universe.
As you're deeply familiar with the CBC I wonder how you might or might have already pitched that idea as a funding proposal
to CBC, or another large media organization in Canada, or as a challenge to CanCon regulations.
Sara: And I'm keeping an eye on the chat, I'll stop there. Jesse: Yeah.
Jesse: Well, I'll start, I guess, with the last one, because it's the freshest, I have not talked to the CBC about that
haven't talked to any broadcaster about that. I sort of,
It's not really, you know, the way I'm approaching it, given my position, is to create - is, you know, the ISO will become the -
We're both the carrot and the stick, I would say. In that, we want to offer incentives for folks to engage with Indigenous storytellers, by
letting Indigenous storytellers empower them to do their own thing and create on their own.
And, freedom, a little bit from, you know, because so much of the, at least on the screen; the moving image side,
so much of the funding in Canada is really based on commercial viability. And for indigenous folks, this is a bit of a trap because, like,
You prevented us from having that sector, Oh, and now you demand that we show that we get, like -
It's a bit of a circular argument that has the effect of just forever keeping us out. So we want to free that up a little bit and just
allow Indigenous folks to start telling their stories the way they want. And my prediction will be because the -
places like the CDC and I don't even use their names, like anyone who has a platform where their thing is broadcasting
or disseminating or exhibiting stories -
and I tell this to folks all the time and it's hard, because those places love to position themselves as the ones who really are the
you have to beg them, but the reality is, if the folks that ran - if Ted Sarandos, who ran Netflix
could think of all these great stories by himself, he just would, but he can't so he needs to hire other people to do the storytelling.
that's where the power actually belongs in the relationship, not with the people with the microphone, it's the people that can say something
into that microphone that are the powerful ones. And so I think if we just empower
and because this is the other falsity that has been largely spread in the cultural side when it comes to Indigenous folks,
is that there's not interest in our stories when there's incredible interest in our stories all over the world. There's this
huge interest in the stories. Nor is it because of lack of talent that we haven't been telling these stories.
There's like, enormous talent in our community. It's opportunity that has been the barrier to people seeing these things, so let's create the
opportunity and I just believe, because I know these folks,
they'll smell a good story, and they will all come, it is not us that has to lure them, the bait is empowering storytellers to be great.
Like locusts, those folks will descend. And if Canada just did that, as a policy,
Let's focus on what original, thoughtful, visionary storytelling, like unique stuff. Not stuff that is
sort of, market surveyed into existence. Stuff that's like unique visionary stuff, all those folks will immediately come to the table,
because they need, they desperately
need that stuff. So that's how I would sort of see that. There was talk about moving past risk and
and was regulation or - that is such a
that is such a great point, because I think so much of diversity, equity and inclusion work is actually about risk mitigation not actually about
diversifying or including folks.
And you can tell that when they're unwilling to share power, because if you really want to do this properly,
it's sharing the power. That's what narrative sovereignty is about, saying "No, you have to give us the power just to do this
and not think that you can always do it better". And the thing with sharing power is
in the sort of Western neo-liberal capitalist mindset, that's always viewed as you have to lose power to share power.
When in fact it's the exact opposite in practice, if you share power, you will only become more powerful. It's a fascinating thing
about how the world works, but it is true.
So I do think we have to move that back by encouraging folks to become accomplices, not necessarily just allies.
So help us actually do stuff, not necessarily just, you know, praise our way of thought.
The Indigenous Internet, I heard a question about the Indigenous Internet.
If I knew what that would look like, I think I'd be in a much nicer house, right now. I have no idea what that would look like,
there are much smarter people than me, though.
Sacagawea, I'm thinking of, or Jason Lewis or Loretta Todd. Like there's really huge brains that think all about this all day.
We should find them, and ask them.
My role is to, sort of, go "Great, how can we fund that thing that I don't understand that sounds awesome."
That's my role, is to try to make sure that those people have whatever tools they need.
To create that, you know, I'll flip it to something I do immediately understand, there's like been a lot of talk about starting like
an indigenous Netflix, for example.
As a way of, again, finding a self-determined space within a larger ecosystem. I'm not opposed to that idea,
there is some concern I have, is like, a functional business idea whether that would would succeed.
Just because it's, you know, the way the streamers operate they take a very sort of
omnivorous approach, which, it's all about subscriber acquisition, and it's hard to compete against something so large. But we have seen
that you can make, you know, there's audience for very niche offerings, and that one of the beauties of our time is that you,
you can be as niche as you want to be, you know, you can find an audience and-
So maybe there is absolutely room for that. In terms of what I imagined an Indigenous Internet might mean,
it might mean one that isn't for - seems to be entirely driven for-profit and for capitalist ends, which I'm not sure was the original intent of the Internet.
If you know I'm, again, I'm not an Internet historian or expert, but I am old-ish, so I do remember, like, I lived in pre Internet times, and if I
remember the conversations we were having back then, it was like the Internet - the whole point of it was to not be capitalist,
it was to sort of exists beyond that paradigm, and to offer a much different exchange of information and ideas and opportunities.
Perhaps not surprising in our current systems that it has been entirely overtaken by capitalist concerns which is fundamentally why I think
before we get to an indigenous Internet,
yeah and I guess I'll say this, I mean there might have to be some divestment from our current digital infrastructure,
meaning, and I don't mean that from,
I mean that from like, I take my own example, i'm way less on Internet platforms today than I was at the beginning of the pandemic.
And I would equate that entirely with wanting to be sane, and have a mental health that allows me to get up in the morning
and parent my two children and and live with my partner and have a dog that is somewhere right now probably tearing up my tulips.
So yeah, and I don't think that that will actually occur in a coordinated way. I think, actually humans just going to start to recognize
that some of this really isn't that good for us.
And that the reason it isn't good for us isn't inherent in the thing, it's how the thing is being used against -
not, well I guess, against us and that we really should question some of that that.
That we have allowed the Internet to lose its way, by taking the easy road and letting capitalist forces decide - for-profit forces - decide
what happens on there, and I'm not sure that that has been particularly beneficial to the cause of, you know, humanity.
SARA BANNERMAN: I can hardly believe it but we've already reached the end of the session.
Thank you so much for your talk today and for responding to all of the questions.
It's a wonderful honor to have you here.