Bill C-11, often called the Online Streaming Act, may ensure more funding for a wider and more diverse range of Canadian programs, reminiscent of 2019’s Blood Quantum, directed by the late Jeff Barnaby, which is about on the Mi’gMaq reserve of Red Crow.Courtesy of Elevation Pictures
Jesse Wente is an Anishinaabe author, broadcaster, speaker, arts leader and advocate for Indigenous rights.
Canada’s broadcasting system should reflect the individuals who live here.
That shouldn’t sound like a revolutionary statement. But Indigenous, Black and other racialized Canadians have been marginalized in film and tv for thus long – their voices muted, their representation minimized – that the pursuit of something even akin to equity has too often felt like an against-all-odds quest.
That is one among myriad issues that Bill C-11 – often called the Online Streaming Act – goals to deal with. While debate across the bill has been predictably contentious, it has also been eye-opening for a lot of. The conversation has dropped at mainstream attention the systemic obstacles that proceed to face in the best way of marginalized voices on the subject of sharing their stories on-screen.
The passage of C-11 would begin to interrupt down those barriers. It will begin to open the doors to a more accurate and nuanced depiction of the trendy Canadian experience. To say this laws is overdue is an insult to understatement.
The way in which we watch film and tv has been entirely transformed prior to now decade. Nevertheless it goes beyond technology – we’ve also modified as people, and as a rustic. We’ve turn into more aware of our own history through the stories we’ve been told and people we’ve not. There’s an increasing desire to reckon with the long run by higher understanding our past. This requires much more storytelling, not less.
Yet the laws and guidelines that govern broadcasting and content creation haven’t modified since Brian Mulroney was prime minister. In consequence, the gatekeepers remain largely the identical. Shows and movies proceed to underrepresent – or misrepresent – the experiences of Indigenous people and others. We’re stuck in a loop.
You may view C-11 as simply a practical bill. It goals to update and adapt an outdated system of rules and regulations to a really different time and circumstance. But to reframe our broadcast sector as one which desires and indeed finds needed the telling of stories long left untold – that will be a step beyond the sensible, into the inspirational.
A lot of Canada’s cultural bodies were initially established as tools of assimilation. Funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, as an illustration, was for years open to Indigenous artists only in the event that they expressed themselves through a longtime European art form, reminiscent of opera singing or ballet. Over time, we’ve grown more enlightened – but our cultural institutions and frameworks still must catch up.
As a rustic, we’d like to maneuver beyond checkbox diversity, where a certain variety of Indigenous or Black or Asian actors appear on-screen but not necessarily inside stories that really represent their upbringing or reality. We want authentic representation. We want our communities – and others across Canada – to give you the chance to see their stories depicted, as told by those with a shared culture and history.
I feel of it because the difference between a farm and a forest. For a long time, our existing broadcasting rules have given us farms, which have provided a predictable, reliable, homogeneous harvest of content, yr after yr: the whole lot in neat rows, presided over, managed, endlessly repetitious. Bill C-11 holds the potential to show these farms into forests, where unpredictability reigns, old things are allowed to crumble, and latest things are capable of take root, grow and thrive.
I served as the primary executive director of the Indigenous Screen Office, the mission of which is to champion Indigenous creators and support their stories across all screen platforms. Based on my work, I do know that there may be each a necessity and a requirement for stories that come from these communities. Bill C-11 holds the potential to maneuver us in that direction.
Indigenous voices may help define and differentiate Canadian culture. If given the prospect, these creators could help change the best way the world sees Canadian content – and shift things at home. Once we get to know one another through art – after we begin to understand one another’s histories, challenges and hopes – we improve our ability to come back together for a standard purpose. A way of understanding results in a shared sense of belonging.
If we get this right – and Bill C-11, in its current form, comes a lot closer than what it seeks to interchange – we will ensure more funding for a wider and more diverse range of Canadian programs. And we will reform the broadcasting system to be certain that it evolves fairly amid technological and societal changes. Bill C-11 could help us to assume the long run together.
