Andrea Langlois et al - Islands of Resistance - Pirate Radio in Canada

10 • islands of resistance
dian context is Akwesasne Freedom Radio, which was originally
based at the Mohawk reserve on the St. Lawrence River (encompassing
Ontario, Québec and New York State). Because the station crossed
the US/Canadian border, it was able to resist being licensed by either
the Canadian CRTC or the Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) in the United States. Instead, it sought its approval to broadcast
through a proclamation by the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation. As
Charles Fairchild has pointed out, “This arrangement was acknowledged,
but not controlled by the CRTC, while the FCC refused to even
recognize the station itself.” 9 However, when Akwesasne Freedom
Radio went off the air, the Canadian federal government required its
successor, CKON, to apply for a licence to operate in 1982. The traditional
Mohawk council of chiefs then began negotiating with the
CRTC for regulatory rights. Eventually, according to Michael Keith,
the CRTC avoided a confrontation by “recognizing the Mohawk’s ability
to regulate the station’s operation.” 10 Legally, then, we are left with a
confusing cross-border situation in which Keith says the CRTC “recognized”
both the station and the regulatory power of the Mohawks,
while Fairchild says the FCC “refused” to recognize the station at all.
In any case, the CRTC was prevented from shutting down the station
largely as a result of the kind of direct challenge to colonial authority
by Mohawk defenders that would later be evidenced during the Oka
conflict and the subsequent Kanesatake insurgency.
Positioning Pirate Radio in the Mediascape
While the indigenous concept of sovereignty is a very different construct
from what in European terms is called the “commons,” both
challenge control of the airwaves by the corporate state. In the latter
case, the airwaves are seen as an open public space where everyone
should have equal access to the means of having their voice heard. In
Canada, most media outlets — from public radio to newspapers — are
woefully inadequate in terms of encompassing, much less directly
representing, the diversity of voices and identities that exist throughout
the country. Instead, the mediascape is saturated with news, music
and culture tailored to market demographics and programming that
embodies and perpetuates the omnipresent representations of dominant
ideologies. When using the theoretical construct of the commons,
which sees media as a social resource to be shared, the questions