This week: Bringing blood home. Over a half-century after their removal, a large cluster of blood samples from Indigenous islanders in Australia have been returned to whence they came. The result of direct negotiations with the affected community, the move has been held up as historic for the country. But if Australia’s on the bleeding edge of repatriation, what about the rest of the world? From skin to saliva, blood to bones, do we even know how much Indigenous material has been banked across the globe? And should we put repatriation under the banner of reconciliation?

Joining host/producer Rick Harp to take the pulse of these and other questions are University of Alberta associate professor of Native Studies Kim TallBear, as well as Candis Callison, Associate Professor at UBC's Graduate School of Journalism.

// Our theme is 'nesting' by birocratic.

“What was CBC North management thinking?” A question fresh on the mind of CBC audiences and CBC staff this week, shocked and dismayed at the decision to combine three territorial morning newscasts into one. A decision that proved short-lived, however: even before the ink was dry, CBC brass buckled under the backlash and reversed course.

In this discussion, host/producer Rick Harp is joined by Ken Williams, assistant professor with the University of Alberta’s department of drama, as well as Candis Callison, Associate Professor at UBC's Graduate School of Journalism as they try to parse out the ‘logic’ behind the move, what it tells us about how well CBC gets the north, as well as what it would take—and who—to make things right going forward.

// CREDITS: This episode was edited by Anya Zoledziowski; our theme is nesting by birocratic.

This week, class dismissed—or should we say class denied? A North Carolina advisory board has rejected a proposed Native charter school on the grounds its curriculum would be too radical. Of course, that’s all in the eyes of the beholder, but with funding all in the hands of the state, could this be a textbook case of education discrimination? And nearly a half century after the 1970s rallying cry “Indian Control of Indian Education,” how close is anyone to realizing that vision?

Joining host/producer Rick Harp on the roundtable this week are Ken Williams, an assistant professor with the department of drama at the University of Alberta, and U of A associate professor of Native Studies Kim TallBear.

// Our theme is 'nesting' by birocratic.

It’s a dilemma that confronts much of Indigenous media: with so much of our time spent working to counter, correct and contextualize mainstream misinformation, do we not risk becoming “This Week in Settler Colonialism”? Does routinely responding to routine violations of our lands and lives see us become all-consumed by what the State does and doesn’t do? How do we resist that pull of a Settler center of gravity, and stop merely critiquing, and start actually creating outside of its orbit?

Questions on our minds a lot these days as we begin a conversation on where else we might invest our attention and intentions, to build on our original mission as an Indigenous reality check on the misrepresentations of Settler-oriented media.

Joining host/producer Rick Harp this week are Candis Callison, Associate Professor at UBC's Graduate School of Journalism, and Brock Pitawanakwat, Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies at York University.

CREDITS: This episode of the podcast was edited by Anya Zoledziowski; hosted and produced by Rick Harp. Our theme is nesting by birocratic.