Lorna Roth focuses on the regional, national, and global implications of Television Northern Canada and the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), the only dedicated aboriginal television service in the world and available to every household in Canada with cable and satellite. She shows that by making their programming an integral part of the Canadian broadcasting infrastructure, First Peoples have succeeded in mediating their own historically ruptured pasts and creating a provocative model for media resistance. Concentrating on policy development, Roth explains how First Peoples in Canada have refashioned television broadcasting, indigenizing and transforming it into a tool for inter-community and national development. Something New in the Air valorizes the struggle of First Peoples to attain legislated recognition of their collective communications and cultural rights and shows how this struggle explains, in part, why they are now acknowledged as having the most advanced aboriginal broadcasting network in the world.

Lorna Roth is associate professor and chair, Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University.

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