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Outside Looking In: Viewing First Nations Peoples in Canadian Dramatic Television Series
By Mary Jane Miller
9780773533660 hardcover
9780773533667 softcover
Mary Jane Miller sets up a fascinating paradox in Outside Looking In: Viewing First Nations People in Canadian Dramatic Television Series, her momentous exploration of the representation of First Nations people in Canadian television. The very first line of the very first chapter is "Start with this: white people should not tell First Nations stories." Miller then proceeds to chronicle virtually all the First Nations stories told through the dramatic series on Canadian television since Radisson, first broadcast in 1957. She is not telling First Nations stories; rather, she is telling on those who have told First Nations stories, or worse, gussied them up to look like what they believe an Indian looks like. "What Does an Indian Look Like?" would in fact be as appropriate a subtitle as Miller's own.
Outside Looking In is a study of Canadian culture through the lens of a number of television series — Radisson, The Forest Rangers, Adventures in Rainbow County, Matt and Jenny, The Campbells, The Beachcombers, Spirit Bay and North of 60. Examining these series over 40 years, she effectively documents Canadians' relationships with the First Peoples of the country, and Canadians' willingness or unwillingness to truly see First Nations people as we actually exist.
As Miller points out, "nomenclature is a vexed question," and she quotes a number of scholars, aboriginal artists and elders who address the issue of naming before she explains how and when she uses the terms Native, aboriginal, Indian, Amerindian, First Peoples or First Nations. She notes that "someone who is self-identified as Haida or Saulteaux will use the terms 'native,' 'aboriginal,' and 'Indian' within a few sentences;" as an Algonquin/Irish halfbreed, I too use most of those terms interchangeably, although I do capitalize aboriginal and Native, and I use the term halfbreed, which Maria Campbell reclaimed in her 1973 book of the same name.
Miller gives the reader lots and lots of content, both from the mainstream cultural commentators as well as aboriginal scholars. In setting her argument, she cites Bakhtin, Foucault, Derrida and Lacan, which might spook the average reader, who may not understand the questions posed and theories established by those thinkers and, even if they do, may be put off by the very distance they imply. But Miller hardly depends on the established theorists; she draws as well from the likes of Metis scholar Emma Laroque, Ojibway playwright and columnist Drew Hayden Taylor and Yukon scholar Julie Cruikshank.
She launches the discussion of the representations of aboriginal people with a description of a pageant in Durham, Ontario, in 1927, entitled Confederation: An Indian Pipe Dream, with descriptions transcribed from the program. It seems that the representations of Indians did not change much from the pageant and the school of books of the era to the first television show that offered images of First Nations and their relationships with the settlers. Miller examines the legacy of Radisson, an action adventure series for children that was both a response to the American fascination with Davey Cockett and an attempt to present a historical look at the country; its subheading was "The Authentic Chronciles of a Canadian Adventurer filmed in Canada for TV with an All-Canadian Cast." For some reason, there are no episodes of Radisson extant; all the English versions have disappeared, and neither French nor English episodes are in the National Archives Sound and Moving Image Collection (now in the Library and Archives of Canada). Nonetheless, Miller makes the case for Radisson as the baseline for her study, analyzing the synopses in the CBC Times, press releases, reviews, other scholars' research and the memories of a few one-time fans. Launched only four years after the CBC began to broadcast, Radisson was shot in English and French, often on location; it addressed the relationships between the English, the French and the First Nations, and strove for authenticity. "Clearly, the CBC did try to be authentic with Radisson, with this notable exception: white actors played all but one of the Indians."
Miller diligently reminds her reader that throughout the history of Canadian television, First Nations had little power or control over the representations of their lives. Early on she notes that "White is the colour of the network executives, producers, and initial creators of all the series discussed in this book," and then she leads us through the evolving images of aboriginal people through nine series, from Radisson through to Spirit Bay to North of 60, enumerating in every case the number of actors, writers, producers, directors, story editors or advisors on any particular show.
Miller traces the evolving images of First Nations, from the hostile Iroquois and converted Hurons of Radission to the Metis guide Joe Two Rivers and the "Shing wauk, old medicine man, played by a white actor" of The Forest Rangers, and on to Pete Gawa in Adventures in Rainbow Country, where for the first time a First Nations person, Buckley Petawabano, played a First Nations person.
As the images of Indians became more nuanced, more "authentic," so do the politics of representation. In the chapter on Spirit Bay, Miller documents both the efforts to include First Nations writers in the creation of the program as well as the writers' frustration at never being able to write the scripts that would be produced. Barbara Godard, Drew Hayden Taylor, and Daniel David Moses all weigh in on the challenge of writing First Nations stories for television. Here is the crux of it: the very way First Nations cultures tell stories is antithetical to the conflict-resolution structure of the medium.
Part Three of Outside Looking In, more than 40 percent of the book, is about North of 60, and could very well stand alone as a book, except of course, it couldn't. It needs all the content of previous 200 pages, 35 years and eight series. By the time one arrives at the five chapters of Part Three, one has the tools to examine both the claims of authenticity as well as the criticisms of the series from Native and non-Native commentators. One has a sense of one's own biases and an awareness of one's gaze.
Interestingly, Part Three is preceded by a chapter about fans and genres, much of which is devoted to the fans of North of 60. Because North of 60 existed completely within the internet age, unlike most of the other series discussed, the author (and the reader) has more access to the response to the series from a diversity of viewers. As well, because there are six seasons of episodes, "North of 60 was successfully sold to 122 countries and territories;" fans from across the world can meet on the websites and talk about each episode.
Miller's detailed analysis gives even a reader unfamiliar with the series insight into the creation and impact of North of 60, from the financing to the creative decisions about design, from the cast and characters to the themes and issues addressed in the program. The show about Lynx River, a northern Dene community and its people — RCMP constable Michelle Kenidi, her brother Pete the band chief, Michelle's nemesis the bootlegger Albert Golo and the rest — not only was produced and broadcast for six seasons on CBC, but has since produced five movies of the week that follow the further evolution of the community.
North of 60 marked the first time a series focused on First Nations community had so many aboriginal creators — actors, story editors, writers and, once, a director, as well as up to six cultural advisors per episode. Still, Miller is careful to recognize that the power is not in the hands of the people who are being represented. The producers are still white, as are most of the writers and all but one of the directors. It feels very much like everyone from producers to actors to the CBC shies away from claims of authenticity: "after a year with the show, producer Tom Dent-Cox told Ken Eisner in Playback, 1 March 1993, that 'there was no intent on the part of the writers to be forcing native stories.'" That the tension over power and race existed on set is evident in the anecdotes; in one telling line, Miller says that Native American actor Michael Horse, who played Andrew One Sky, "welcomed Gil Cardinal as a director because he didn't have to have things explained to him." Cardinal is Cree.
This is the beauty and bitterness of Miller's book: it is about one thing, how First Nations are explained to the dominant culture. Miller holds obvious admiration for North of 60, and she carefully documents how much closer to accurate are its representations of aboriginal people than previous series managed to achieve. In the chapter exploring issues and themes in the series, she examines the Dene cultural values, justice, the law, alcohol, land claims and land use, jobs, politics, the role of women, guns and the treatment of aspiritual practices. Her references are diverse: academics and anthropologists, Dene elders and RCMP officers, CBC research documents and Dene cirricula, The Globe and Mail and Aboriginal Voices. She holds up the television experience of North of 60 to the comment and criticism of all.
The detractors of the series, aboriginal as well as non-aboriginal, get ample ink. An essay by Drew Hayden Taylor, Ojibway playwright and columnist, entitled "North of 60, South of Accurate," originally published in the Toronto Star, is examined in detail. Miller seems especially vexed with John Haslett Cuff who was the Globe television writer for the duration of the series run, calling him "largely hostile" and
condescending." What is interesting is that both Natives and non-Natives seem to object to the same things, albeit from different positions: that North of 60 is lacking in authenticity. The producers of North of 60 must feel damned if you do; in spite of their best intentions, no one is happy. I was only an occasional viewer of the series, watching to see native people on TV, to see a land that I love, to celebrate my friends' success. Like most reviewers, Native and non-Native alike, I felt it suffered from a lack of humour, and I was never able to shake the awareness that the (white) people in power were still presenting their (white) idea of what Indians looked like in situ. At the same time, I wanted the show to succeed because of the undeniable visibility it afforded Native people in this country.
Outside Looking In was 18 years in the making, and it shows in the details. The endnotes alone are another book, but in a good way. Incorporating the amount of information in 53 pages of endnotes would havemade the reading of the body of the text arduous, and they are not so essential that a reader is lost without them, but they do offer additional insight into so many of these people — both fictional and real. Because of Miller's previous work on The Beachcombers in her book Turn Up the Constrast: CBC Television Drama Since 1952 and because North of 60 ran from 1992 to 1997, allowing her to document the entire series, Miller is able to make a cedible argument about the evolving representations of aboriginal people on television. The Beachcombers was for so many of us the first time we saw ourselves on television in a real way, as part of a community. Thirteen years later, the importance of Jesse Jim is still evident; a character in Darrell Dennis's play Tales of an Urban Indian, conflicted about his desire to be an actor, says "there ain't no Indian actors. Just that guy on Beachcombers."
Yes, we have moved from one role model — Jesse Jim — to a whole community of flawed and loving and struggling and wise and dumb aboriginal people. Yes, we have moved from "not a single Indian in the drama" in Radisson to serving as writers, story editors and directors, as well as actors on mainstream drama. And yes, "Others Will Continue to Explore," as Miller titles her final chapter. But Miller's final chapter also raises the questions she finds herself unable to answer, about representation and appropriation, and she offers no easy solutions.
Outside Looking In is a massive, important work, covering 40 years of television, a snapshot of an era when aboriginal people had little to no control over their images in the mainstream media. It is also, accidently, a lovesong to and lament for the CBC, which has consciously, actively participated in the making visible of the First Peoples of this land, and no longer has the resources to make that kind of difference in what and how Canadians see. If aboriginal people assume some of the real power in how we are represented on mainstream Canadian television, Outside Looking In will be a fair and thorough documentation of a bygone era. If we do not achieve a real measure of control, it may serve to explain why the medium failed us.
Yvette Nolan, Literary Review of Canada, June 2008
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