On this episode: the back half of the all-Indigenous panel MI host/producer Rick Harp moderated at “Reimagining Political Journalism: Perils, Possibilities & What Comes Next”—convened last November by Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication in Ottawa—in which the audience joins in with their thoughts and questions for our all-star panelists: Candis Callison , Associate Professor in the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies and the School for Public Policy and Global ...
Feb 22, 2025•50 min•Ep. 359
On this episode: Reimagining Political Journalism, the title of a three-day November 2024 event at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication in Ottawa, it included a formidable panel of Indigenous practitioners, moderated by MI’s own Rick Harp! Sub-titled “Perils, Possibilities & What Comes Next,” our all-Indigenous panel delved into all three over our 90-minute conversation—shared here as the first of two parts—a frank and freewheeling exchange on power, politics, and jou...
Jan 25, 2025•37 min•Ep. 358
On this week’s collected, connected conversations, our three-part pile of political pontifications concludes its campaign—as does our Summer 2024 Series as a whole—with a comparison of activism versus access: in the pursuit of mainstream political influence, is it better to be in the room or out on the streets? Featured voices this podcast include (in order of appearance): • Brock Pitawanakwat, associate professor of Indigenous Studies at York University • Ken Williams , playwright and associate...
Sep 30, 2024•46 min•Ep. 357
On this week’s collected, connected conversations (the seventh in our eight-part summer series): the push and pull of performative politics, where we address the question of just how far Indigenous individuals can advance Indigenous interests in a settler-centric system. Featured voices this podcast include (in order of appearance): • Brock Pitawanakwat , associate professor of Indigenous Studies at York University • Ken Williams , playwright and associate professor with the University of Albert...
Sep 20, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 356
On this week’s collected, connected conversations (the sixth in our summer series): a political perusal of the prerogatives of power. The first in our three-part look back at the allure and limits of mainstream political participation, we begin with a Trudeau triple-header, a Liberal dose of discussions about the only federal leader this podcast has ever known. Featured voices this podcast include (in order of appearance): • Brock Pitawanakwat , associate professor of Indigenous Studies at York ...
Sep 09, 2024•56 min•Ep. 355
On this week’s collected, connected conversations (the fifth in our summer series): the conclusion to our five-part retrospective, Why Canada Needs Natives Needy, wherein we feature a few more settler-centric solutions to settler-made problems, as well as examples of what truly independent Indigenous initiatives look like. Featured voices this podcast include (in order of appearance): • Naiomi Metallic , associate professor of law at Dalhousie University, and Yellowhead Institute advisory board ...
Aug 29, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 354
On this week’s collected, connected conversations (the fourth in our summer series): part four of Why Canada Needs Natives Needy, ranging from the precarity of charity to the dubious duty to consult. Featured voices this podcast include (in order of appearance): • Michael Redhead Champagne , Winnipeg-based community leader, helper, author, and public speaker • Lisa Monchalin, criminology lecturer at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in B.C. • Candis Callison , associate professor in the Institute ...
Aug 19, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 353
On this week’s collected, connected conversations (the third in our summer series): our third installment of Why Canada Needs Natives Needy , in which we debunk diagnoses of Indigenous impoverishment peddled by settlers, often to their own benefit. And while some come off as almost comical, others appear downright disturbing. Featured voices this podcast include (in order of appearance): • Q. Anthony Ali , freelance writer, commentator and podcaster • Ken Williams , playwright and associate prof...
Aug 08, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 352
On this week’s collected, connected conversations (the second in our summer series): part two of Why Canada Needs Natives Needy, our comprehensive look at the systematic incapacitation of Indigenous peoples, and how Canada’s overt efforts at social disintegration have fostered generations of individual displacement and disconnection. Featured voices this podcast include (in order of appearance): • Kim TallBear , professor in the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta and Canada R...
Jul 29, 2024•58 min•Ep. 351
The MEDIA INDIGENA 2024 Summer Series —our classic compendia of collected, connected conversations drawn from our voluminous eight-year archive—begins with the first in a five-part compilation, 'Why Canada Needs Natives Needy,' a wide-ranging rundown of all the ways this country has produced and perpetuates Indigenous dependency. And here in round one, we review its roots, entanglements which stretch back to the country’s very creation. Featured voices this podcast include (in order of appearanc...
Jul 19, 2024•56 min•Ep. 350
On this week’s round table—the last all-new episode before our summer series launches—the second half of our special live on location look at Indigenous-led genomics. Recorded at the Global Indigenous Leadership in Genomics Symposium at UBC back in May, part one brought us the basics of genomics, how it differs from genetics, and how Indigenous genomics compare to those of the mainstream. This time around, we hear from SING Australia's Amanda Richards-Satour (Adnyamathanha and Barngarla Communit...
Jul 09, 2024•38 min•Ep. 349
What is genomics? In what ways might Indigenous genomics differ from its mainstream counterpart? And why is it important they be Indigenous-led? Answers to those questions and more on this special edition of MEDIA INDIGENA, recorded live on location at the Global Indigenous Leadership in Genomics Symposium, hosted this past May at the University of British Columbia. Joining Rick Harp for the first half of this two-part conversation were MI regular (and SING Canada co-founder) Kim TallBear, as we...
Jun 28, 2024•43 min•Ep. 348
This week: our return to the realm of IZ, the personification of critical Indigenous studies as imagined by MEDIA INDIGENA regular Kim TallBear (University of Alberta professor of Native Studies), a character she embodied in her keynote at “Of the Land and Water: Indigenous Sexualities, Genders and Ways of Being,” hosted earlier this year in Whitehorse by the Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning. And in this back half of the adventures of IZ (missed the first half? catch it here ), we hear ...
Jun 03, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 347
In this back half of our longer-than-expected mini INDIGENA, host/producer Rick Harp picks up where he left off (drinking deeply of coffee, commodity fetishism and character actor Wallace Shawn) with Kim TallBear (University of Alberta professor in the Faculty of Native Studies and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience and Society) and Candis Callison (UBC Associate Professor in the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies and the School for Public Policy and Global Affairs...
Apr 16, 2024•31 min•Ep. 346
For our latest mini INDIGENA (the sweet + sour version of MEDIA INDIGENA), we yank on the global supply chain linking locals in Campbell River, B.C. to the opening of what’s only the second “Indigenous-operated, licensed Starbucks store” in Canada. And just like last time —when our MINI went long on what we meant to be just our opening topic—our content cup once again runneth over, as we eat up an entire episode exploring the ethics of commodity-based commerce as carried out by Indigenous partic...
Apr 08, 2024•31 min•Ep. 345
This week: building upon last episode's commanding talk by MI's own Kim TallBear, in which she highlighted the insatiable settler drive to consume all things Indigenous—including so-called ‘identity’ claims staked by individuals—host/producer Rick Harp discusses her insights with fellow roundtable regulars Ken Williams (associate professor with the University of Alberta’s department of drama) and Brock Pitawanakwat (associate professor of Indigenous Studies at York University), a conversation pe...
Apr 01, 2024•43 min•Ep. 344
On this week’s program: a plethora of pretendianism! So much, in fact, it’s going to take two whole episodes to fit it all in. And here in part one, we take our deepest dive yet into the ultimate underpinnings of pretendianism—the political imperatives of whiteness. Driving the insatiable settler urge to possess every last thing, fueling the desire to assume and consume imagined Indigenous 'identities.' Indeed, such self-serving self-Indigenization is very much a byproduct of the colonial imagin...
Mar 24, 2024•56 min•Ep. 343
This week: 'Close Encounters of the Colonial Kind,' the title of a talk given by our very own Kim TallBear (University of Alberta professor of Native Studies) at “Of the Land and Water: Indigenous Sexualities, Genders and Ways of Being,” hosted earlier this year in Whitehorse, YK by the Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning. Although rooted in her by-now familiar terrains of sexuality and science, Kim’s monologue was a bit of a departure from what we’re used to here on the podcast: delivered...
Mar 09, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 342
On this week’s Indigenous round table: legal limbo? Did the Supreme Court's recent rejection of Quebec’s constitutional challenge to Bill C-92 really cement the self-determination of Indigenous peoples on child welfare? Or did it seal in the status quo, one where the feds still hold all the cards and all the funds? A ruling described as “very beautiful” by one leader, hailed as paving “the road… for the transfer of authority” by another, such celebrations risk missing the core point of C-92’s cr...
Feb 27, 2024•51 min•Ep. 341
This episode, another ‘mini’ INDIGENA (the easy-peasy version of MEDIA INDIGENA)—one where the first item went way longer than anyone expected! Joining host/producer Rick Harp on Tuesday, February 6th were Kim TallBear (University of Alberta professor in the Faculty of Native Studies) and Candis Callison (UBC Associate Professor in the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies and the School for Public Policy and Global Affairs), as they discuss the multiple Indigenous actors within Mni Sóta Mak...
Feb 13, 2024•54 min•Ep. 340
For our first mini INDIGENA of 2024, Candis Callison (associate professor in the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies and Graduate School of Journalism at UBC) and Kenneth T. Williams (associate professor with the University of Alberta’s department of drama), joined host/producer Rick Harp this Friday, January 19th to discuss: Norway to pay Sámi reindeer herders millions for violating their human rights How Canada led efforts to weaken original UN Indigenous rights declaration Why the Yello...
Jan 24, 2024•47 min•Ep. 339
For our final episode of 2023, a live audience recording from the spring, when we took part in the ICA 2023 Pre-conference , “20 Years of Podcasting: Mapping the Contours of Podcast Studies,” hosted May 24th and 25th at Toronto Metropolitan University. Entitled, “Independent Indigenous podcasting as knowledge production,” this four-person roundtable was a rare opportunity to bring folks together in one place—Rick Harp, Brock Pitawanakwat, Kim TallBear—along with Candis Callison, who joined us re...
Jan 07, 2024•54 min•Ep. 338
This week, our penultimate program of 2023 reunites Kim and Ken for another mini INDIGENA (the rough and ready version of MEDIA INDIGENA) to discuss an array of items, including: a response to pushback against our discussion (ep 334) about state vs. federal recognition of tribes in the U.S. the mass resignation of CN Rail’s Indigenous Advisory Council, citing “the company's ineffective use of the Council's strategic input” plans announced for Anishinaabemowin version of the first ‘Star Wars’ mov...
Jan 06, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 337
On this week’s round table: colonial carbon culpability. Calling it a “first-of-its-kind analysis,” a recent study by Carbon Brief has crunched the numbers on some 170 years of emissions, seen through the lens of climate justice. Entitled, “How colonial rule radically shifts historical responsibility for climate change,” the report adds a critical dimension to addressing the question of what—and who—has brought us to the brink of depleting our cumulative carbon budget, the maximum CO2 our planet...
Dec 28, 2023•54 min•Ep. 336
This week: where there’s smokes, there’s fire. Does a recent ruling by Quebec’s Superior Court have the potential to dramatically alter Canada's constitutional landscape? Known as R. v. Montour and White, the case takes its name from a pair of Mohawk tobacco traders who refused to pay millions in excise taxes on goods brought across the Canadian border. Import duties the defendants said violated the Covenant Chain, a series of treaties with the Haudenosaunee dating back to the mid-1600s. A defen...
Dec 14, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 335
This week: controversy at the Congress. The National Congress of American Indians, that is. And according to its website, NCAI is “the oldest, largest, and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native organization serving the broad interests of tribal governments and communities.” A little too representative, claim critics, who allege entities are permitted if not encouraged to join the Congress as tribes with insufficient claims to being tribes. The core concern: recognition. Not just ...
Dec 03, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 334
This week, yet another ‘mini’ INDIGENA (the fast + furious version of MEDIA INDIGENA), with some world-wide words for our 333rd episode (!!!), recorded the evening of Sunday, November 12th. No doubt sub-consciously inspired by the recent 5-year(ish) anniversary of our deep discussion of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report—which gave us 12 years to act decisively and radically on carbon emissions to keep life viable for humanity by capping the increase in average worl...
Nov 20, 2023•45 min•Ep. 333
We wrap up October a titch late with another ‘mini’ INDIGENA (the quick + dirty version of MEDIA INDIGENA), featuring a quartet of tidbits, ranging from a federal security agency’s overt admonishment of Nunavut over ‘covert’ foreign investment in otherwise neglected infrastructure to new highway signs in Saskatchewan overtly delineating its many treaty boundaries to passing motorists. Joining host/producer Rick Harp the early afternoon of Friday, October 27 were Ken Williams (associate professor...
Nov 02, 2023•41 min•Ep. 332
This week: another MINI INDIGENA featuring Kim TallBear (professor in the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta) and Candis Callison (Associate Professor in the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies and the Graduate School of Journalism at UBC), who joined host/producer Rick Harp Wednesday, October 18 to discuss: where things go from here after a majority of Australians voted to reject the constitutional institution of an Indigenous advisory board known as The Voice the B.C....
Oct 22, 2023•53 min•Ep. 331
MEDIA INDIGENA is back from its summer break with all-new shows, and we kick off with a far-ranging foursome of items, from a historic provincial election in Manitoba to the RCMP opting not to lay charges against a Yellowknife doctor for the unilateral sterilization of an Inuk woman. Joining host/producer Rick Harp for this first 'mini INDIGENA' of the season (recorded Friday, October 6) are two familiar voices, Brock Pitawanakwat (Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies at York University) an...
Oct 08, 2023•47 min•Ep. 330
