Media Representations of Policies Concerning Education Access and their Roles in Seven First Nations Students’ Deaths in Northern Ontario

Abstract

We employed postcolonial theory, a case study methodology, and critical discourse analysis to investigate the ways in which non-First Nations and First Nations news sources produced understandings of the role(s) that education policies may have played in the deaths of seven First Nations students in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. We found that national non-First Nations media sources produced the discourse that First Nations peoples require federal government policy as a form of intervention in their lives. Further, we found that though these media sources focused on criticizing the present state of First Nations education, they ignored the colonial processes and policies that contributed to a situation that resulted in the students attending high school in Thunder Bay, rather than their home communities. First Nations and local (Thunder Bay) non-First Nations media sources, however, emphasized the need for greater cooperation between the Canadian government and First Nations peoples to resolve the long-standing policy issues that continue to affect First Nations youth and their education in northern Ontario. These findings point to important differences in the ways in which various forms of media cover First Nations policy issues.

Mapping the field of education research and media

“…The most recent of these publications is by Taylor (2018) who conducted a content analysis of Australian newspaper reporting on drug testing in schools, framed through discourses of 'public good'. A Canadian study by Gardam and Giles (2016), compared the framing of the deaths of seven First Nations students in non-First Nations and First Nations news sources. In another study, Kelly (2006) considers mainstream media frames of 'troubled and troubling youth' and the imagery conveyed through discourses of 'inner-city youth as "gang bangers"; teen mothers as "children having children" and "welfare bums"; and girls as fashion obsessed and impressionable ' (p. 27).…”

The Tikkun Indigenous Youth Project: A Land-based Well-being Retreat by Youth, with Youth, for Youth

“…This passage either results in the successful completion of secondary school before the age of 20, dropping out, or being "forced out" (Tuck, 2011) by racism and extreme alienation, thus causing the youth to return home to their northern community without many options for an education, a job, or a promising future. Thunder Bay has long been a critical case study of the continuing colonialism and inequities against Indigenous youth in Canadian education systems that reproduce oppression and systemic racism (Hare & Pidgeon, 2011); dysfunctional bureaucracies that govern daily life and needs of housing, food insecurity, chronic poverty, and lack of access to basic services such as dental and healthcare (Macdonald, 2017;Talaga, 2017); and desperate mental health conditions of illnesses, homesickness, loneliness, and social alienation that are real and compounding for many northern Indigenous youth (Gardam & Giles, 2016).…”