Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Indigenous Media (Australia)

Australia's 517,200 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up 2.5% of the population. Key social indicators reveal their conditions remain well below the non-Indigenous population. They have won access to their own forms of media only following persistent campaigns and applying technological creativity and ingenuity.

The Indigenous Press

The first identified publication produced by an Aboriginal organization was the Aboriginal or Flinders Island Chronicle, published in 1836. More than 100 years later, the first known Torres Strait Islander publication was a typewritten newspaper published in 1938. Few details exist of others until the 1950s, although many small, community-based newsletters had “spread the word.” Some used local Aboriginal languages and became a resource for the language renaissance that emerged from the Homelands and Outstation movement in the Northern Territory and North Queensland in the late 1970s. Aboriginal land council newsletters increased dramatically during the land rights protests of the late 1960s and 1970s and have remained an important source of news on these issues. Also in the 1970s and 1980s Aboriginal responses to racist media representations took the form of demands for some control over their representation.

The perceived threat to languages and cultures in remote Indigenous communities from satellite television set the publishing wheels in motion again in the 1980s with a wide array of newsletters and magazines emerging from communities and government departments. The Northern Land Council in Darwin began publishing the monthly newspaper, Land Rights News, in 1976 as a roneoed newsletter, and this remains the longest-running Indigenous newspaper in Australia. Throughout the 1980s, Black Nation, edited by Ross Watson, raised Aboriginal community concerns surrounding Australia's 1988 Bicentenary and Expo in Brisbane. Watson went on to become the first station manager of Murri Radio 4AAA in Brisbane in 1993—the first state capital city Indigenous community station.

The 1990s saw a resurgence in Aboriginal newspapers led by the successful Lismore-based monthly, the Koori Mail. Another regular publication was Land Rights Queensland, published by the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action (FAIRA) Corporation from 1994 until 2001. The National Indigenous Times was launched in 2002 and arguably remains the most critical of the three current Indigenous-focused newspapers published regularly. A lack of access to culturally relevant media training has meant that there are few Indigenous people working in the Indigenous print media industry either as journalists or in sales and marketing. It is not unusual, therefore, to find non-Indigenous Australians occupying key roles in these papers.

The Rise of Broadcasting

It was not until the late 1970s that Indigenous broadcasters began to gain access to the airwaves, largely through the emerging community radio sector (then called public radio). The first Aboriginal radio program went to air on 5UV in Adelaide in 1972. By the early 1980s, Indigenous broadcasters were involved in community radio stations in the Northern Territory, Queensland, and New South Wales. During this period, Indigenous broadcasters also began broadcasting weekly onthe Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) regional services and through the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS).

More than 100 licensed Remote Indigenous Broadcasting Services (RIBS)—small radio and television stations—serve their audiences in remote parts of Australia with a further 25 radio stations in regional and urban areas. Each represents a local Indigenous media association and many broadcast in local languages. Most of the small, remote stations are engaged in re-transmitting available satellite programming, with a handful having access to sufficient resources to enable local production. The Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) was one of the earliest of these and has been an important role model. In 1985, CAAMA became the first Aboriginal community station in Australia. Since then, it expanded to become a major production house for Indigenous audio and video. Several other regional Indigenous media groups have also become major production hubs.

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution