The full text of this paper was first presented at the University Of Georgia, Art and Design. Atlanta, Georgia, USA. 2004 to a graduate class and as well presented at The 2004 Conference for The Society For Cinema and Media Studies. Indigenous Media workshops in Atlanta, Georgia, USA

As a result of the history bestowed on me, I arrived to the topical bandwagon of The Aboriginal cause late in my life. I am a Gross Ventre, Sarcee, Assinibone, Cree Ojibway/Saulteaux French Métis; I didn’t know anything about all our respected Aboriginal people fighting the system. I did know the basic signification of “Indian”. Living against the stereotype Indian ever since I could remember, I barely remember Chief Dan George in the movies or the AIMS incidents @ Wounded Knee in the seventies, because I never wanted to associate myself with Indians on TV, in Canada. I still had to deal with the cultural attributes of being an Indian in this country.
It was not until 1984 when I worked with Margo Kane, founder of The Spirit Song Native Indian Theatre Company, formerly situated in Vancouver, and now artistic director of Full Circle Performance Society that I became relatively proud of my heritage. With those years of assimilation, I attempted to fit into the white system, be like the white man, but it’s just as much as the subtleties of racism as well as the blatant racism which reminds us who the “Indians” are when it comes to our school system, workforce, and leisure life which created the cultural lack in our families on the streets and roads of our cities and countries, We have transformed that lack into a new cultural forms digital filmmaking and new media. In Vancouver through the works of multi-media authoring, Computer generated imaging, and digital filmmaking, our history and the contact history is being retold by our young artists like Zoe Hopkins, Pamela Matthews, Helen Haig Brown, Derek Edenshaw, Ron Harris, Curtis ClearSky, and Vera Wabegijig.
Outside of the Pan-Indianisn, which exploited First Nations people, our fore bearers quietly maintained pockets of their literacy in hidden rooms and secluded areas, where authorities figures were no-where to be seen. From the banned giveaways and potlatches in the early years of colonialism, there was a legislative attempt to kill the Indian in the children and adults of all indigenous nations across Turtle Island. At the same time of this cultural genocide, filmmakers and photographers attempted to capture Native life on the filmic page, while indecision, racism, and cultural superiority separated the Native person from the lifestyle and social skills which, normal descendants of colonial North America took for granted. University was adamantly denied to Native people and our people were limited to less than high school educations and pushed into menial labor jobs throughout the continent
...
In the terror of 911, to the terror of being snatched away from ones family or culture; what is the difference between being arrested in ones country and removed to no-man’s land in Guantanamo Bay or being snatched from one’s family and placed in the no-man’s land of residential schools and orphanages? None, as the imperial states attempted to defend their actions on behalf of creating a safe and better world for democracy. 911 many have brought the terror of genocide to center stage, and for once the western world experienced a consciousness, which affected us all. The Notion of Terrorist or Rogue States existed long before September 11, Wounded Knee, Oka, Gustaferson, Ippiswash, Sun Peak resorts, and the cultural history of the last 500 years. From the time Columbus the Wage of Terror began for Indigenous People worldwide. Outside the state of grace of our Kitchi Manitou, colonialism destroyed the essences of our being. Today it continues as genocide changed its tools of persuasion to utilize every tool of deception to propagate the politics of terror and containment. From the clandestine CIA supported movements which fuels the North America drug markets to the crack infested allies of North American cities to the decadence of uptown private parties of immoral decay, the system perpetuates the existence of class and social economic divisions of race and power.
Today, we must watch out for the echelon system, which surveys the analogue and digital modes of mass communication. We are enslaved by the global body of persuasion, illusion, control and the consumer lifestyle which confronts us today. Through the cohesive and ideological repositioning of aboriginal thought and ideas, the world system has supported the economic marginalization of Indigenous cultures worldwide as capitalist social sanctioned institutions use indigenous human rights to encroach on the sovereignty of indigenous territories and justice. Post 911 legislation only compounds existing polices of containing the aboriginal cultures of North and South America which in turns magnifies the divide and conquer mentality which pits Native communities against each other and allows personal hidden agendas to manipulate the courts of justice and public opinion. For example, the existing Leonard Peltier outcome has been magnified within the realm of public consciousness as a result of the current media coverage of First Nations Canadian John Graham Patten and US Native Arvol Looking Cloud, who have been arrested for the death of Micmac woman Anna Mae Acquash, although perhaps in reality we need to look more deeply at this as a familiar tool used by vested uranium and land grab interests at the end of a long trail , in tandem with subversive justification for cointelpro tactics. Let us ask what justice is being served here…

When scholar Dr. Taiaiake Alfred, in his open presentation at the University of British Columbia March 2,003, stated that there is a leadership crisis in Native communities across Canada, I would agree with his thinking in relation to how economic, social, and political initiatives are implemented by governmental legislation and multi-national corporations to buy off Native leaders with respect to cash deals, and band council favoritism. Was this all to appease the aboriginals in the federally appointed band council system, which sees the traditionalists, the native youth and some of our contemporary artists as the instigators, who are embellishing the problems of our communities? May the Great Spirit help the spirits of the many Native women and Anna Mae Acquash -women who were murdered as a result of the patriarchal values of a dominant system, which wants to control the matrilineal aspects of Aboriginal cultures.
Global politics of Terror since September 11 played on the emotions of uncertainty, doubt, and fear in the same way that the old system prior to 911-used fear to create distrust between Native and Non-Native communities. Today the instilling of fear is still used to enforce those old historical positioning with new methods of control through thermal imaging, bio-metrics, and the invasion and capturing of our bodily fluids; all to protect our way of life, to suppress free will, religious momentum, and define the freedom and unfreedom of the individual in capitalist societies.
From the moment INSET (Intergrated National Security Enforcement Team) officers broke down the door of a first nations family on Vancouver Island in October 2,002 and accused them of being part of a terrorist organization, we must be vigilant in the protection of our rights and freedoms as this continent’s First People. We must be watchful of the legislative manipulation and coverted actions of the US, and Canadian governments regarding the initiating of the US’s Patriot I and II acts, and Canada’s Anti-terrorism legislation and the Security of Information Acts, which can infringe on our rights and freedoms as the original inhibitors of this continent.

This Age of terror has existed since the new world invaders spilt blood, and we as humans learned to love and kill for our survival. From the Augustine Discourse of Caesar’s time, the corporal real of the Father, the Son, The Holy Ghost and The Holy Spirit has governed the laws and currency of Emperors, Queens, Kings, Prime Ministers, and Presidents with a rein of death, repentance, banishment, acute and symbolic crucifixation, and the mechanical reproductions of currency, art, and propagated history. With Walter Benjamin’s Berlin Chronicles and The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction, and perhaps my notion of The Age of Technological Authenticity, we’ve created images in relation to the events we remember as a child within the environment, plus how we utilized such moments to constructs human value and cultural exchange.
From either authentic or counterfeit reproductions, we have enforced the creation of our images into history for our ideological survival. To find balance in this truly more terrifying world of geo-politics de-constructed by individuals and traditional religious independence, or fanaticism, depending on the definer of truth within media forms, we must continue each day with honesty, humility, and respect.
As a media artist , I strived to understand, what is killing our people to understand our people’s pain and the worthlessness bestowed on the Indian.
To help the less fortunate, to seek the truth and light of my creator, these are some of the notions which helped to prevent This Age of Terror from destroying me from the time I was ripped away from my siblings and parents, to surviving sixteen foster homes by the time I was four, to the time I was raped as a child. What’s done is done to my body, because history can provide meaning to our lives, if it is written truthfully, and not revised to propagate the superiority of race and class relations. Unfortunately, the latter statement took precedence As a Métis filmmaker, it is important to improve our worldview with continuous education so that we can all live together in harmony, not distrust. With the relative short history of film exhibitions (Paris 1895) nine years since the 100 anniversary of that Parisian premiere, the principles of actualities programming, documentaries, dramas, and comedies have not changed since that Parisian night, except for the fact that the media that very year in 1995, portrayed Canada’s First People as terrorists, militants, saboteurs, provocateurs, and radicals in maintaining their cultural and traditional existences as the descenta humans of this continent.
Cultural propagation has been historical events resulting from the exploitation of culture by mechanisms of the state. Examples of these mechanisms are illustrated.
1 Triumph of The Will "…Even though Ms. Reifenstahl had an amazing career as a film-maker, her most scarring project came under the German government film board "UFA studio. Opening credits stated: Produced by Order of the Furher Directed by Leni Reifenstahl
2 The CIA and U.S invasion of Guatemala in 1954 against Jacob Arbenz. CIA created a radio station and propagated information to the Guatemalans to encourage dissent against Arbenz’s government. Arbenz died in exile. The result of direct corporate and governmental complicity with the coup. From Theatre In the Raw production of Herschel Hardin’s play, The New World Order, 1999
3 The Gustafson and Oka incidents are further illustrations of how cultural apparatuses were used in favour of producing a negative reaction against the First Nations people. Inaccurate RCMP reports given to reporters. Television, radio, and print media (including CBC) dutifully created biting, jarring, and inciteful images of Native/Non-Native relations. When does a story stop being "news" and becomes a political tool in a media promoted event?
4 The Bin Laden War and the Bush war. Both adversaries utilized the media machine to
propagate their will of destruction against the evil of this world.

From Avante Guarde to German Expressionism, popular culture was being formed and shaped by this new technology. From between the 19th. Century, twentieth century and now the twenty-first century, modernity and mass culture evolved from the Grotesque, the Phantasmagoria, to the “Age of technological Authenticity” Where class war became war of States, Total war, and now Terror wars. Where Struggle in the 19th century dealt with violence in terms of social warfare, the 20th century, struggle involved genocide and monumental violence, and now today struggle involves again genocide, the protection of indigenous territories, and the exploitation and devaluation of religions and cultures within the mass media

Where the media is used to uphold the authoritarian personality and class structure re-defines and compresses capitalist societies. Where the melodramas depicted the marginalization and trivialization of fantasy, and today the illusions between these forms are diminishing, while the ludicrous, the playful, and the fearful trilaterally exist side by side within the private and public spheres of individuals and collective groups. Whereupon artists such as 19th century Richard Wagner epitomized that Poverty can be educated out of existence, and that we accept self-sacrifice and self-renunciation. With the 20th century, it became an annihilation of differences and denial of classes. Alien images assimilated into style, D.W. Griffith saying poverty can be wiped out by democracy. Today, we are invaded with sound, viruses, pornography, fantastical terror and death images from all forms of conventions which exemplify the failure of these notions, while the gap between classes is becoming wider and wider. With the 20th. Century, it became a matter of control. Science controls, technology applies science, and determinism is located in “history” not in the autonomous individual. Today, it has become a matter of chaos re-defining control. Politics applying technology, and determinism being located in economics, and not in history.
19th. Century civil society was swiped aside with 20th century ideals. Society became the ideal producer of normative truths, not culture. Where there was a freedom from the state, cultural authenticity and questions of who I am? How much consciousness does a person need, when there is no grand purpose? Only a need to justify oneself to pathological social forms. The enjoyment of the boss, the pleasures of life, commodities feeding the soul. Where mediation was not possible in language but in images. Self-expression becomes a source of truth. 2,001 transformed the ideals of the 20th century ideals, where now society is contained and the State becomes the ideal producer of normative truth. Where there is limited freedom from the state, authenticity becomes questionable without legal clarifications and technological ratification. Questions of who I am, becomes who is he, who is she? He becomes she, and she becomes he. Where consciousness becomes electrified through the Internet, grand purpose becomes mass entertainment, and everyone justifies themselves in relation to media forms, not historical forms. Where mediation is only possible through legal language, not images. Self-expression becomes a source of alienation, and truth turns to economics. The realization of the 20th century [of the] self being exchanged, bought, sold, [and existing] in an atomized state has now become in the new millennium fragmented, alienated, and constructed by globalization, cultural authoritarianism, and bio-mechanical notions of containment.

From a century of abundance to a beginning of scarcity, the self had to adjust to the politics of exact terror. Nevertheless the filmic devices and their productions of meaning throughout the 19th. 20th., and now the 21st century encompassed highly charged conditions of social, cultural, and political change. There were forms of collaborations during the film age, but Film was seen as the dominant literacy. From the urban gothic to the spokesperson of justice and persecution, We have become instigator and destroyer of worlds, as capitalist expansionists instigated the exploitation of resources, and now religious terrorists, became the destroyer of resources as a result of two planes crashing into the former World trade centers. Semiotics returns with a bigger bang than the colonial symbols of the last millennium. John Berger popularizes the science of semiology with his literary forms. “Ways of Seeing.” His work extrapolates on the theories of Ferdinand Saussure. The founder of the science of semiology. Saussure created “[a] science that studies the life of signs within society”. His theories were compiled by his students after his death in 1913.”9
The divide and Conquer mentality exists in Native and Non-Native communities, and the media has reflected this reality in its programming. Us versus them, Confrontational issues exploited for news, dramatic posturing, and sympathetic voyeurism. Oka may be over, but recent media presentation involves gun caches, Mohawk warriors and Chiefs, and the reeking poverty of First Nation’s reserves, all in the name of dealing with the "Indian problem". Race politics has transformed to race survival with the language of blood defining our present day of suicide bombers and terrorist schemes.
Canada must resolve its relationship to the aboriginal people of this country, if we are to continue to grow as a people. With this new millennium, new technologies, and cultural forms, we must utilize endurance, perseverance, assertiveness, entrepreneurial skills, a sound and realistic education, and create a new literacy to bring closure to the ideological differences between Native and Non-Native discourses. We must continue to develop our work even though we "can't’ understand our closest thoughts, but are told to understand the thought of others” 10 Aho, all my relations.