Outside Looking In: Viewing First Nations Peoples in Canadian Dramatic Television Series (McGill-Queen's Indigenous and Northern Studies, 53) (Volume 53) - Softcover

Miller, Mary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0773533672 ISBN 13: 9780773533677

Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2008

Synopsis

Widely sold abroad, Beachcombers and North of 60 are what many international audiences know about Canada. In Outside Looking In Mary Jane Miller traces the evolution of representations of First Nations people in fifty years of Canadian television broadcasts.

Using recent scholarship in ethnography and popular culture, Miller throws light on both what these series present and what is missing, how various long-standing issues are raised and framed differently over time, and what new issues appear. She looks at narrative arc, characterization, dialogue, and theme as well as how inflections of familiar genres like family adventure, soap opera, situation comedy, and legal drama shape both the series and viewers' expectations. Miller discusses Radisson, Forest Rangers and other children's series in the 1960s and early 1970s, as well as Beachcombers, Spirit Bay, The Rez, and North of 60 - series whose complex characters created rewarding relationships while dealing with issues ranging from addiction to unemployment to the aftermath of the residential school system.

Outside Looking In addresses the need of the non-Native society that created these programs to know what it has told itself about the culture of its first peoples. It presents a vital descriptive record of material in danger of slipping from the public consciousness - or from the national archives (as is the case with Radisson) - and provides a much-needed historical perspective for more recent aboriginal television drama and that which will be created in the future."

About this title

About the Author

Mary Jane Miller is professor emerita, Brock University, and author of Rewind and Search: Conversations with the Makers and Decision-Makers of CBC Television Drama and Turn of the Contrast: CBC Television Drama since 1952.

From the Back Cover

In memory of Bruce G. Trigger

Series editors: John Borrows and Arthur J. Ray

The McGill-Queen's Indigenous and Northern Studies series publishes books about Indigenous peoples in all parts of the northern world. It includes original scholarship on their histories, archaeology, laws, cultures, governance, and traditions. Works in the series also explore the history and geography of the North, where travel, the natural environment, and the relationship to land continue to shape life in particular and important ways. Its mandate is to advance understanding of the political, legal, and social relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, of the contemporary issues that Indigenous peoples face as a result of environmental and economic change, and of social justice, including the work of reconciliation in Canada. To provide a global perspective, the series welcomes books on regions and communities from across the Arctic and Subarctic circumpolar zones.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0773533672
• ISBN 13: 9780773533677
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 504