Journalists covering Indigenous Peoples in renewable energy should focus on context and truth, not click-bait – The Conversation

We rely on the news media to help us understand the world. But news media does not provide unbiased windows. This bias has been shown to be a problem for Indigenous Peoples around the world. For example, Brad Clark of Royal Roads University has said that TV news coverage of First Nations, Métis and Inuit alternates between imagery of invisibility and hyper-visibility — resulting in the marginalization of Indigenous voices in Canada.

In their book Seeing Red, Mark Anderson and Carmen Robertson take readers through more than 150 years of Canadian journalism. They explain that although racist narratives are becoming less blatant over time, “colonial stereotypes have endured [and even flourished] in the press.” It is said that the idea of reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples will be a fleeting one until the media stops “construct(ing) them in demeaning unidimensional ways.”

In more recent examples, Les Couchi of Nipissing First Nation writes about how portrayals of “savage, unruly, drunk and lazy [‘Indians’]” leads to prejudices across powerful boardrooms and government offices. Hayden King, Anishinaabe scholar of Indigenous Politics at Ryerson University, writes that the general approach of 20th century newspapers was to paint Indigenous Peoples as “savages to be mocked, excused or contained … .”

Read More: https://theconversation.com/journalists-covering-indigenous-peoples-in-renewable-energy-should-focus-on-context-and-truth-not-click-bait-122760