Candace Maracle  0:07  
Hi, everyone. My name is Candace Maracle and I'm a former graduate of Ryerson University School of Journalism. I got my masters about five years ago. And since then I've had the opportunity to produce for CBC Radio and As It Happens and The Current, and I've also reported for APTN's national news. But some of the work that I do that I find the most rewarding is my work in documentary filmmaking. I've had two feature documentaries, and they've both done really, really well for themselves in the film festival circuit. And I get invited to universities to do screenings and director's talks all the time in front of students like you. My first documentary was called the Creator's Game, and it was actually my master's thesis. It centered around a headline making issue in 2010, about a men's lacrosse team called the Iroquois Nationals. And they were a team that traveled on their nation zone, issued passports, their Haudenosaunee passports. And actually at the time, they were denied travel, so they were forced to forfeit the world lacrosse championships. Now at the time, I found that mainstream media had done such an inadequate job of covering it, that it infuriated me. Here's why. The Iroquois people as they're known by the French, or the Haudenosaunee as we refer to ourselves, and there's also my nation have never relinquished our sovereignty, which basically means that we don't consider ourselves Canadian or American, but Haudenosaunee. And we also reserve the right to travel on our nation's own documentation. Here's my Haudenosaunee passport that actually used to travel to Switzerland and to Prague with the team. Our right to mobility is enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. That sounds like a mouthful, and we'll get more into that a little bit later on. We're also the creators of Canada's national sport, lacross.

Tadodaho Sid Hill  2:09  
I think there were some court decisions where some of the east coast,east coast natives there went to court and trying to go within the land rights, action, some of the land, and the judge says, Well, you speak your language? Can you sing your songs? Do you do your ceremonies? I says, well,  no, no, no. He says well, then you are just you're just a descendant of these people. And you're no longer a people.

Candace Maracle  2:38  
Therefore, it's both an issue of nationhood and the pride to represent ourselves on the global scale, but it's also our right to do so. Mainstream media at the time had reduced these issues, our issue of nationhood and sovereignty, to tobacco, casinos, and taxation. Now, this does less to inform the Canadian public, but rather triggers hostility and rage. You know, those little comments that are left at the end of articles, posted anonymously, those racial tirades that are rife with stereotypes. Well, they kind of hurt. Lack of context in mainstream media is probably the biggest issue that I have when they cover our stories. When there's no backstory, it really hinders the Canadian public's ability to understand the issue in any comprehensive manner. And to paraphrase a quote that I read earlier, the decontextualized Indian then becomes a problem Indian, the Indian who misappropriate, the funding the homeless, Indian, the drunk Indian, I mean, the list goes on and on. All of this makes it easier for the Canadian public to jump to quick assumptions and to reach generalizations about us. But here's our opportunity to do better. Journalism is an act of character. It can be both exploitive, or it can be insightful, and that onus rests on our shoulders. We need to challenge these assumptions and these prejudices. Call to Action 86 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said journalism schools and media schools do better to educate their students on Aboriginal history, the legacy of residential schools, Aboriginal treaty rights, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, but also the frayed relations between Aboriginal peoples with the crown because of a history of broken promises. That's why this course is so important to me, not just professionally, but also personally. You see, all four of my grandparents attended the residential schools, and that's directly impacted my life today, this many years later. It's the reason why my mom was too ashamed to teach my sister on Iron native tongue, even though she's spoken, and it's why that I'm forced to learn an endangered language, of which there are only 4000 speakers, now as an adult, and it's also why my mom will never be here to hear me speak it. I know it's not an easy task and that Indigenous issues are really complex. But I'm hoping that I can help in some way by sharing with you what I know about reporting in Indigenous communities.

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