Our Native Land

After six years on the air Indian Magazine was ready to go "all-red, all-the-time" and re-launched under it's new title, Our Native Land. The show aimed to "give more air time to native peoples and ... limit non-natives to a minimum."

Indian Magazine had grown up alongside a resurgent native rights movement in Canada, becoming a provocative, politicized, all-native current affairs show when it became Our Native Land in 1970.

On Saturday afternoons for 21 years, dedicated listeners would "get their bannock and tea," and tune into CBC Radio for news from Our Native Land. The first - and so far only - national radio program focused on native issues and cultures, it chronicled the rejuvenation of native literature, art, culture and political activism beginning in 1965. Hosts included Johnny Yesno, Bernelda Wheeler, Albert Angus and Brian Maracle, who were part of the all-aboriginal production team.

"Our Native Land is Canada's only continuing national radio program for native peoples. I realize that programs about Indian, Métis and Eskimo people have been done before, but not with native peoples participating. They were being used, studied, analyzed and classified like rare butterflies," Yesno said in 1971.

In this first episode of the re-launch, the Oct. 3, 1970 show opens with a story on communal living in Vancouver, interviews Iroquois-Cherokee singer Kay Starr, and closes with a segment on Indian newspapers and magazines.

Posted on Nov 5, 2011 6:00:00 AM