Aboriginal media lab to be used to challenge stereotypes

When internationally acclaimed Aboriginal film-maker Loretta Todd launched the Aboriginal Media Lab (AML) on Feb. 22, she screened a 1930s Hollywood movie called The Silent Enemy, a film that gives a fictionalized account of traditional life in Northern Canada. It featured an all-Aboriginal cast.

The film was accompanied by contemporary live fusion Native music, composed and performed by Russell Wallace & Friends and was presented at the new Vancouver International Film Centre & VanCity Theatre in Vancouver.

"The Aboriginal Media Lab is a forum to promote the complexity of Aboriginal people by promoting and encouraging Aboriginal media arts that renew, reframe and assert our history, our present and our future," said Todd. "The first aim of the Media Lab is to ensure Aboriginal history is accurately and innovatively refected in the media in order to counter persistent misunderstandings about Aboriginal societies. We want to improve the quality and quantity of Aboriginal media arts and challenge the stereotypes and historical inaccuracies so often portrayed in the predominately non-Native media, even today.

"Using an old film to launch the Aboriginal Media Lab allowed us to speak back to a cultural artifact from Hollywood, intervening with contemporary Native music, that both comments on the stereotypes and responds to the dramatic elements of the story. The long-term vision of the Aboriginal Media Lab is to become an actual media laboratory, a place for experimentation and the practical application of technology in the lives of Aboriginal people and communities," concluded Todd.

The Aboriginal Media Arts Lab is a place where film-makers, artists, community people, academics and educators will gather to create Aboriginal ideas, research methodologies and technological applications to communicate Aboriginal history.

Conceived of by Todd, the Media Lab is intended as a place of exchange and investigation in order to enhance the quality and quantity of Aboriginal media on Aboriginal history.

Among the objectives of the Aboriginal Media Lab is the goal to undertake research that will make a positive difference in media production and broadcasting, re: Aboriginal history, storytelling and aesthetics. The lab is designed to create the opportunity for Aboriginal academics and Aboriginal producers and broadcasters to build relationships and collaborate.

To-date, the lab has received support from the Media Arts Division of the Canada Council, and will soon officially launch a three-year program, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). This program will enable research and a series of future think tanks or idea circles.

The Aboriginal Media Lab, an independent organization, has formed strategic partnerships with technological and media issues leaders comprising of the Chief Dan George Centre, Simon Fraser University and the First Nations Studies Department at UBC.