Representation of Aboriginals in Canadian Newspapers

Running head: REPRESENTATION OF ABORIGINALS IN CANADIAN NEWSPAPERS
REPRESENTATION OF ABORIGINALS IN CANADIAN NEWSPAPERS
Name of the student
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REPRESENTATION OF ABORIGINALS IN CANADIAN NEWSPAPERS
Introduction
The issue to be focused in this paper is the misrepresentation of Aboriginal people in
Canadian media and the focus would be on the right of Aboriginal parents to take care of their
children. The story in focus here is the decision of an Aboriginal mother to cure her ill daughter
through traditional methods and not in a hospital.
The story was published in The Star in 2014 with the heading First Nations parents can
now doom their sick children(Thestar.com, 2018)..
The essay attempts to bring to light the issues of Aboriginal people in Canada and its
representation in the media. Wide-ranging issues are there that are faced by the Aboriginal
people in Canada including murder of and the missing Aboriginal girls and women, racist attacks
on men and so on.
The governments for long have found it difficult to address these issues properly. One of
the main reasons for this is that the issues have not been viewed from the Aboriginals
perspective.
The essay links the work of Hardinger (2005) to analyze critically, the “common sense”
shown by the Canadian media in portraying the issues of the Aboriginal peoples. The essay
discusses other resources that would provide further insight into the issue.

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REPRESENTATION OF ABORIGINALS IN CANADIAN NEWSPAPERS
Discussion
In 2014, The Star, one of Canada’s leading dailies, published a news article by Rosie
Dimanno, where the author demonstrated concerns regarding the attitude of the Aboriginal
parents regarding the health of their children (Thestar.com, 2018). According to the article, an
11-year old Aboriginal girl’s mother rejected chemotherapy and decided to treat her cancer
through traditional healing methods.
The hospital authorities had moved to court to demand chemotherapy. However, the
ruling went against them as the Judge stated that denying the mother the right to choose for her
child would be denying Aboriginal sovereignty. The article questioned the ruling of the court
stating that it was taken in a hurry and risked the life of the girl.
The arguments made in the article by the writer have some valid points but it also brings
to light the hypocrisy of the Canadian media. On one hand, the First Nations people are
encouraged to govern themselves but on the other, when they take any decision, the government
and the media put them down. The girl took the decision to stop chemotherapy as she was having
great difficulties and pain.
Thus, instead of criticizing the court’s ruling and the mother’s decision, the media could
have shed light on it from a neutral perspective without being hypocrite.
Harding (2005) explains elaborately the function and nature of the media when it comes
to portraying the First Nations people. The author, in his seminal work titled The Media,
Aboriginal People and Common Sense talks about the primary function of the media, which is
“to construct common sense that audiences use to interpret news”(Harding, 2005).