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Archive project preserves iconic Indigenous radio program
By Keri Ferguson, Western News
June 21, 2022
When director of Indigenous studies and sociology professor Janice Forsyth came across a forgotten cache of cardboard boxes in the Faculty of Social Science four years ago, she knew she struck gold.
Inside the boxes sat audio recordings of Smoke Signals, the CHRW Radio Western show produced and hosted by Elders Dan and Mary Lou Smoke. Forsyth then invited Marni Harrington, associate librarian in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies (FIMS), FIMS PhD student Danica Pawlick-Potts and FIMS professors Paulette Rothbauer and Heather Hill to take a look.
The audiotapes contained nearly 30 years of Smoke Signals shows, featuring interviews with several notable Indigenous authors, musicians, scholars, leaders and politicians. Throughout the broadcasts, Dan, a member of the Seneca Nation, and Mary Lou, a member of the Ojibway Nation, also share their Indigenous knowledge and perspectives on local and national news.
“Once we learned what was on those tapes and how unique they were, we immediately said, ‘Yes,’ to doing whatever we could to preserve Dan and Mary Lou’s commentary on events as they were unfolding from the early ‘90s through to the mid-2000s,” Rothbauer said (continue reading).
