La Ronge, Saskatchewan -- Missinipi Broadcasting Corporation’s (MBC) has been supplying Aboriginal music, radio, and film to northern Saskatchewan since 1983 -- 37 years.
Created via funding from the Northern Native Broadcast Access Program (NNBAP), MBC was funded and supported by the Secretary of State. The program’s aim was to fulfill a long-standing obligation to enhance, protect and preserve aboriginal languages while at the same time allowing indigenous peoples to control their own communications and content.
While initially most broadcasts were in English, a strong focus was placed on use of the aboriginal languages. Today, MBC provides ten hours of Cree languages and ten hours of Dene languages programming per week, and strives to integrate the languages into everything from special programs, to contests and more.
While the video component of MBC's profile has waxed and waned with available funding pools, MBC has recently (Jan 2020) received a grant to digitize tens of hours of tape/film programming captured pre-2000 in northern Saskatchewan. This, coupled with video journalism funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage's Local Journalism Initiative through CACTUS, video production at MBC is now viable again.
While the original list of communities virtually mirrored CBC’s service area, today MBC is heard in well over 70 communities, including many southern cities where thousands of ‘Urban Aboriginals’ now make their homes but still wish to keep informed of what is going on in the north.
The Local Journalism Initiative reporter Brandon White is based in La Ronge, Saskatchewan.
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A propos l’IJL
LJI Impact is the section of commediaportal.ca where the journalists and their organizations participating in CACTUS' Local Journalism Initiative can share their greatest successes.
Through the written stories, photos and videos you see in the LJI Impact section, you'll be able to read first hand accounts about how the presence of a community journalist is making a difference in communities across Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative and the Community Media Portal.
The Community Media Portal is a gateway to the audio-visual media created by community media centres across Canada. These include traditional community TV and radio stations, as well as online and new media production centres.
Community media are not-for-profit production hubs owned and operated by the communities they serve, established both to provide local content and reflection for their communities, as well as media training and access for ordinary citizens to the latest tools of media production, whether traditional TV and radio, social and online media, virtual reality, augmented reality or video games.
The Community Media Portal has been funded by the Local Journalism Initiative (the LJI) of the Department of Canadian Heritage, and administered by the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) in association with the Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec (the Fédération). Under the LJI, over 100 journalists have been placed in underserved communities and asked to produce civic content that underpins Canadian democratic life.


