Ojibway playwright Drew Hayden Taylor comments below on the success of First Peoples artists and writers who are expressing their culture through mainstream film, music, theatre, publishing and Web environments.

For untold thousands of years, the only form of transmitting ideas and information in Aboriginal communities was via the oral tradition. In Canada, there was no written language amongst the approximately 53 separate Nations that had a distinctive language or dialect. There was no need for one—the storyteller was king. As one elder put it, "Writing something down is asking permission to forget it."

Today, it is a vastly different reality. Satellites, the Internet, television, faxes and telephones have catapulted Aboriginal society into the global village. One lone Cree in Northern Quebec can now communicate and share his way of life with another person, or thousands of people, on the other side of the world. One individual with a camcorder can interview, tape and record for posterity the stories and legends of his or her community elders. Languages that were in danger of being lost can now be stored, studied and kept alive.

However, with every gift, there is a potential downside. The mass diffusion of popular media is rapidly eroding the foundations of many reserves’ ability to sustain their traditional values and original languages. Elders are worried about the power of mainstream media messages on the young. And a poll done in the 1990s indicated that within the next 50 years, there will possibly be only three Aboriginal languages still spoken in this country: Ojibway, Cree and Inuktituk.

During the late 19th century, Métis leader Louis Riel predicted: "My people will go to sleep for a hundred years and it will be the artists that awaken them." In fact, it has been during the last quarter of the 20th century that Aboriginal people have rediscovered and embraced the power of theatre, writing, music and film.

In the mid-1980s, Tomson Highway’s Rez Sisters pioneered Native theatre’s entry into the Canadian theatrical mainstream. Aboriginal writers such as Lee Maracle, Richard Wagamese and others have elbowed their way into the fiercely competitive world of publishing, while Native-owned and operated publishers such as Pemmican Books and Theytus Press are showing how control of media and public exposure go hand in hand. Popular Canadian Broadcasting Corporation shows such as North of 60 and The Rez have made Tom Jackson and Tina Keeper celebrities in the world of television entertainment.

With curiosity songs like "Halfbreed" and "Running Bear" happily a thing of the past, it is now Aboriginal musicians who write about Native life and celebrate it. With a boost from CanCon regulations (stipulating that 35 per cent of Canadian radio music programming be Canadian), singers such as Buffy Sainte-Marie, Inuit Susan Aglukark and Labrador’s Kashtin (an Innu band whose name means "tornado") gained critical acclaim and large followings, no doubt paving the way for other Native singers. And when the film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, by Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk, won the Cannes 2001 Camera d’Or Award for the Best First Feature Film and played across Canada to packed and appreciative southern theatres, another major barrier was broken.

With Aboriginal radio networks, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (launched in 1999 on first-tier cable service) and the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami Web site (launched in summer 2002), Aboriginal people are finally getting to tell their own stories to their own people—as well as bringing First Peoples perspectives to the larger Canadian society. Riel would be proud.