Even though I live in Taiwan, I don’t get the relatively new indigenous TV station because it is only on cable, but I was happy to see that it got covered in the International Herald Tribute. One of my colleagues, Janubark 高德義, was interviewed for the piece:
Other than the language lessons and weekly news broadcasts in the major tribes’ languages, most of TITV’s programs, including the daily news, are in Chinese.
Janubark, an aboriginal ethnic relations scholar at National Dong Hwa University, said tribes would benefit more if each had its own station in its own language. “That would be more helpful in preserving our languages and cultures, which is what Taiwan’s aborigines need most,” said Janubark, who uses only one name.
The point is driven home by this music video on the station’s website, with Aborigine singers taking turns singing a very typical mandopop melody.
In similar news, Kim Christen reports that Australia is getting its “first national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander television service,” NITV. Two of the leading figures in the anthropology of indigenous media, Eric Michaels and Faye Ginsburg, both expressed tremendous skepticism about the future of indigenous media in Australia, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
UPDATE: In the comments, Influxus links to this post on Propagating Media:
The only trouble is that in order to give NITV spectrum on the satellite, they will be switching off the existing, bottom-up network of community television stations: ICTV.
… It is a pity that NITV – a fantastic idea – needs to be launched over the dead body of its existing ‘proof-of-concept’ pilot. More importantly, it is a pity that no-one in government seems to be ‘joining the dots’ in relation to Aboriginal creativity. NITV, ICTV, NIRS – and other initiatives – need investment and strategic direction if they are to become what they claim to be – a ‘national’ resource with both economic and representational clout for an emergent Indigenous polity.
More in this open letter [PDF file].