APTN a TV voice for largely ignored indigenous Canadians

By Dan Levin, New York Times News Service

Sunday, Oct. 30, 2016 | 2 a.m.

The day’s top news stories are beamed from a round studio that evokes a tepee. Adventurous chefs teach viewers how to hunt, skin and cook beaver in a stew. Cartoons about a powerful superhero are broadcast in the Algonquin language.

These are just some of the many programs that appear on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, Canada’s indigenous broadcaster. APTN is mainly aimed at viewers in Canada whose cultures existed long before Europeans arrived. But its reach is far larger, available to more than 11 million Canadian cable and satellite subscribers with news and entertainment programs designed to reflect the community values, spiritual traditions and political priorities of indigenous people across Canada.

By focusing on people who have been largely ignored by the nation’s mainstream media, the network has become a powerful platform for hundreds of aboriginal communities separated by distance and identity but united in their demands for greater recognition in Canadian society.

The network began in 1999 with a mission to speak for and to the roughly 1.8 million indigenous people in a country that is about 75 percent white. While ethnic minorities often appear on mainstream Canadian networks, “the original people are not represented,” said Sky Bridges, 38, chief operating officer of APTN, a nonprofit organization that generates revenue through subscriber fees, advertising sales and strategic partnerships.

“We now live in a time when aboriginal culture is awakening,” said Bridges, who is of mixed indigenous and European ancestry, known as Metis, one of the three officially recognized aboriginal groups in Canada, along with the northern Inuit and First Nations. “It’s important for us to be able to celebrate our culture and make sure it stays alive.”

To further fulfill that mandate, Bridges said APTN was planning to expand into the U.S. in 2017 with a new cable channel, the All Nations Network, which will have 80 percent of its content produced by Native Americans.

Based in Winnipeg, the network has broadcast in English, French and 20 languages spoken by many of Canada’s 634 First Nations. Driven by the spotlight of a 24-hour channel and a majority aboriginal workforce, the network has used its firsthand cultural understanding to broadcast and produce investigative reporting, comedies, dramas, educational shows and other programming with the authenticity its audience craves.